As the gap between New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and his chief opponent Andrew Cuomo narrowed over the past month, more anti-Muslim, anti-Mamdani posts have emerged on X, leading to more than a 450 percent increase in such content from September to October, a new report shows.
The Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) revealed in a 20-page document on Monday that Islamophobic and xenophobic discourse surrounding Mamdani on X had a reach of some 1.5 billion between his Democratic primary win in June and the end of October.
The content stemmed from 35,522 original posts, authored by 17,752 unique accounts on X.
The organisation is now calling on the platform to implement election-specific safeguards, enforce community guidelines against attacks on race and religion, and enhance corrective counterarguments in its algorithm.
Forty-five percent of all the posts the study looked at were authored by verified blue badge users, usually meaning they are paid subscribers of the platform. However, this is not always the case, given that tens of thousands of accounts with blue checkmarks have long been suspected of being bots.