Monitoring after CrowdTangle: practical options for 2025

7/14/2025

Teams that relied on CrowdTangle - a once-popular tool for tracking the spread of content on social platforms - have to adjust. Its shutdown has created a significant gap for researchers, journalists, and public affairs professionals who need to monitor online narratives. This post outlines workable options, the data limits you should expect, and how to keep “decision-grade” monitoring without overpaying.

What changed

Access to platform-level feeds has tightened dramatically. Twitter (now called X) introduced steep API fees; enterprise access can cost upwards of $42,000 per month, effectively pricing out many third-party apps and researchers. Meta Platforms went so far as to shut down CrowdTangle entirely, a tool that was an essential real-time window into Facebook and Instagram trends. Meta’s proposed replacement, the “Content Library,” is limited to academic researchers and nonprofits - excluding most news organizations - and critics say it’s far less useful than CrowdTangle was. In short, some researcher data programs have ended or shrunk, API pricing has skyrocketed, and coverage is now uneven across platforms. This new landscape means you must be strategic: focus on the highest-priority channels and be prepared to stitch together multiple tools and methods to approximate what used to come easily.

Principles for the new stack

Given these constraints, keep the following principles in mind as you build a monitoring stack for 2025:

• Prioritize platforms and audiences: You can’t track everything everywhere - attempting to will only generate noise and overwhelm. Identify the top platforms where your key audience or adversaries are active. For some campaigns it might be Twitter and YouTube, for others Reddit and niche forums. Commit your resources to the places that matter most.
• Separate detection from analysis: Use lightweight tools or tactics to detect potentially important items (mentions, trending posts, articles), and a different set of tools for deeper analysis and verification. Not every alert needs a full deep dive; a two-tier approach optimizes effort.
• Human-in-the-loop review: Automation and AI can help surface patterns, but human judgment is crucial in determining what actually matters. Build a workflow where algorithms might flag a spike in mentions, but an analyst makes the call on whether it’s significant and what to do next. Automation for breadth, human analysis for depth.

Detection layer

First, assemble tactics to catch relevant items or conversations as they emerge:

• Platform-native search & alerts: Don’t overlook the simplest tools. Use built-in search functions on platforms (e.g. Twitter’s advanced search operators, Reddit’s search, YouTube filters) and set up regular sweeps. Many platforms also offer basic alerts or saved searches. Even if it’s manual, checking these daily can catch things algorithms might miss. Save links and screenshots of notable items to a central log as you go.
• Third-party aggregators: There are social listening and news monitoring services (e.g. Brandwatch, Meltwater, Sprinklr) that aggregate data from multiple sources. When choosing vendors, be sure they’re transparent about which sources and communities they cover and how frequently the data is updated. Pilot any new tool with a narrow brief before fully committing – for example, monitor a single issue or keyword for two weeks and evaluate the precision (signal vs. noise) and latency of its alerts.
• Community signals: Set up inbound channels for trusted folks on the ground (staff, partners, loyal customers or supporters) to flag emerging issues. This could be as simple as a dedicated email address or web form, a Slack channel for field reports, or even a WhatsApp/Signal thread for rapid sharing. Provide basic guidance so these community sentinels know what kind of information you’re looking for and the context to include when they report it.

For example, you might maintain a list of saved search queries such as:

• Twitter/X query: (from:YourCompany OR @YourCompany OR "Your Product") (scandal OR lawsuit OR outage) - to catch high-urgency mentions involving your brand.
• YouTube query (Google search syntax): site:youtube.com "YourCompany" + keyword filter: last 24 hours - to surface any new YouTube content about your company or issue in the last day.
• News site query: site:importantnews.com "Your CEO name" OR "YourCompany" past week - to find recent news articles on a key site.

These can often be automated via Google Alerts or a custom script, but even manual checks of a handful of these queries each morning can be revealing.

Analysis layer

Once you’ve detected a potential issue or viral content, you need an analysis workflow to vet and understand it:

• Claim tracking: Centralize all the claims or narratives you’re seeing in a simple spreadsheet or memo. Include fields for the claim, status (unverified, in verification, verified true/false), source of the claim (a URL or description), any evidence found, and your recommended response or talking point. This becomes your living “rumor control” document.
• Source verification: For any given piece of content, have a short checklist to verify credibility. Check who is behind a website (WHOIS lookup for domain age/owner, look at the site’s About page or other content), use tools like the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to see if the content existed prior to today (indicating it’s not a brand-new fake), and do reverse image searches on any suspicious images. If it’s a purported leaked document, look at metadata or unusual formatting. Essentially, investigate before you amplify or respond.
• Narrative mapping: Map how the content is spreading and who is amplifying it. Are a few fringe accounts or websites the only sources? Or have mainstream journalists or officials started engaging? Track which outlets or influencers are driving the pickup, and note if it jumps platforms (e.g., a conspiratorial tweet being discussed in a Facebook group or on a cable news segment). This helps gauge when a minor issue is turning into a major one.

Maintain two trackers or logs:

• Claims tracker: As described above, a table of claims/rumors and their status, evidence, origin, and response plan.
• Outlet/Amplifier tracker: A list of key outlets, social accounts, or forums, with notes on their relevance, typical reach, and how often they drive secondary pickup. For instance, “User X (10k followers) - often first on local political rumors, gets pickup in local blogs” or “Forum Y - niche tech community, but journalists lurk there for scoops.”

This way, when an issue pops up, you can quickly see, “Ah, it’s coming from one of our known high-noise/low-credibility sources, likely we monitor only,” or “This small blog post was immediately amplified by a state media outlet – that’s a red flag, escalate this.”

Reporting cadence

Define a simple daily rhythm for your monitoring team:

• Morning scan: Early each day, do a scan (automated or manual) of your saved searches, alerts, and community reports. Triage what came in overnight or over the weekend. Flag anything urgent for immediate review.
• Midday update: Around lunch, check for any emerging items since morning and update statuses. If something has grown or new issues popped up, consider sending a quick interim alert to stakeholders (“FYI, a rumor about X is trending on Y, we are verifying and will advise if action needed.”).
• Evening brief: At day’s end, compile a brief report of noteworthy items and recommended actions. Even if nothing major happened, it can be as simple as “No significant issues today on [priority topics].” For active situations, it would include what was detected, what it means, and what the game plan is for overnight monitoring or next steps.

Set thresholds for escalation. For example: “If a claim from our tracker is picked up by a top-tier news outlet or hits 10k mentions or is repeated by an official, then immediately notify these five people and activate a response within 1 hour.” Define what “significant” means for your context (volume, velocity, source credibility) so the monitoring team isn’t guessing.

Tooling options to test

Even without CrowdTangle, there are tools that can help piece together coverage:

• News and web monitoring: Tools like Google Alerts (free but basic) or enterprise platforms like Meltwater, Cision, or Brandwatch can track news sites, blogs, and some social content for keywords. They often include sentiment analysis and trending themes, though be mindful of false positives.
• Social listening: Many of the big social media management platforms (Sprinklr, Brandwatch, Talkwalker) offer social listening features. Check their coverage - some might have partnerships for Twitter data, others might rely on public scraping. Understand what you’re getting (e.g., does it include closed groups? probably not). Also, consider newer tools focused on specific platforms, like BuzzSumo or CrowdTangle’s partial successors (for Facebook, tools that use the Graph API with account whitelisting).
• Archiving and screenshots: The moment you see a suspicious or important post, archive it. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has a “Save page now” feature for URLs. There are also services like archive.today. For social media, screenshots (with URLs and timestamps visible if possible) are critical, since posts can be deleted. Tools like Snagit, or even built-in OS screenshot tools, work fine. Maintain a folder or database of these assets.

When evaluating any new vendor tool, insist on a trial or pilot. Use explicit success criteria during the trial: for example, “On our issue X, we need the tool to catch at least 80% of the top posts we manually found, with fewer than 10% false alarms.” Also check things like how fast their alerts come through (minutes vs hours can be the difference between containing a narrative or chasing it). Ask about data provenance and any blind spots (“Do you capture content from private Facebook groups if an admin grants access? What about TikTok or messaging apps?”). No tool covers everything, so know what’s missing. And remember, a fancy dashboard is worthless if you don’t have the workflow and people to use it. Sometimes a combination of simpler tools plus strong human processes beats an expensive all-in-one platform.

Roles and runbook

Define clear roles on your monitoring team (these might be hats worn by the same person in a small team, but delineate the functions):

• Monitor: The person (or shift) scanning the saved queries, checking alerts, and doing first-pass triage. They log raw items and flag those that hit thresholds.
• Analyst: The person who verifies sources, researches context, and connects the dots (e.g., “this Twitter account is the same one that pushed a similar rumor last month”). They draft recommendations: whether to respond, who should respond, and how (a correction, a statement, direct outreach, etc.).
• Lead/Decider: The senior person who approves the response and coordinates execution (comms director, campaign lead, etc.). They might also liaise with legal or security teams if needed.

Have a simple runbook for responding to a flagged item:

1. Detection: Monitor spots an item and logs it (with link, timestamp, author, initial assessment of credibility/impact).
2. Validation: Analyst verifies the item (real or fake? old or new? who’s behind it?) and researches context. They update the log with findings and a suggested action (ignore, monitor further, respond publicly, reach out privately, escalate to leadership, etc.).
3. Decision: If thresholds are met, escalate to Lead. The Lead (possibly in consultation with others like legal) decides on the action: e.g., “Issue a tweet from our official account debunking this,” or “Quietly inform platform security about this coordinated activity,” or “Prepare a media statement in case we get inquiries.” Document the decision.
4. Follow-through: Execute the action and then continue to monitor for impact. Did the false claim die down or did it continue to spread? Did your response get picked up? Track outcomes and feed that back into the process.

Keep this tight. In fast-moving situations, you might cycle through this loop multiple times a day.

Data privacy and ethics

As you build new monitoring methods, stay mindful of data privacy and ethical boundaries. Just because something is publicly accessible doesn’t always mean it should be aggregated or stored without thought. If you’re scraping forums or social sites, check their terms of service. Regulations like the EU’s GDPR or California’s privacy laws might apply if you’re collecting personal data (even publicly posted info can be personal data). Key points:

• Minimize data: Collect what you need for the task, nothing more. Don’t stockpile personal info on individuals who aren’t public figures unless necessary.
• Secure storage: Keep your monitoring logs and archives in secure systems. They may contain sensitive information or unverified allegations; treat them as internal documents.
• Transparency and purpose: If anyone (internal or external) asks, be prepared to explain why you’re monitoring a space. “We track online activity around our industry to respond to customer concerns and combat misinformation” is a valid rationale. Avoid any truly covert or deceptive monitoring that could backfire if revealed.
• Legal review: If you plan to use a lot of scraping or automation, have counsel review your approach for compliance with laws and platform policies. Also, if you inadvertently collect any sensitive personal data, have a plan to purge or anonymize it.

The power of collaboration

Remember that you’re not necessarily in this fight alone. Especially in issue-based campaigns or industries, consider forming backchannel collaborations:

• Industry coalitions: Companies or groups facing similar misinformation attacks might share intelligence. For example, if you’re in the energy sector and activist groups frequently spread false claims, an informal network among the communications leads of major companies can alert each other to emerging falsehoods (without violating any antitrust or confidential info, of course).
• Civil society and fact-checkers: Journalists, fact-checking organizations, and academic researchers are all grappling with the loss of tools like CrowdTangle. Engaging with them can be mutually beneficial. If you spot a viral fake that a fact-checker hasn’t caught, tip them off. Conversely, keep an eye on fact-checker feeds; their debunks can help you respond confidently.
• Joint response: In some cases, a coalition of affected parties issuing a unified response or sharing the burden of monitoring can be effective. For example, multiple NGOs might maintain a shared “misinformation tracker” about a piece of legislation and divvy up the work of refuting different rumors.

No single organization can monitor the entire infosphere. By pooling knowledge and effort (within legal bounds), you can cover more ground and react faster.

What to stop doing

In building a new workflow, it’s as important to decide what not to do as what to do. Some formerly useful practices might now be counterproductive:

• Trying to rebuild a universal feed: The days of having one dashboard showing everything from all platforms are over. Don’t waste time trying to hack together an all-encompassing feed; accept that you need to prioritize.
• Chasing vanity metrics: Don’t measure success by number of mentions or “reach” alone. A spike in mentions isn’t inherently bad if it’s just noise, and a modest conversation in a key regulatory forum might be far more important. Focus on the outlets and voices that truly influence your outcomes.
• Ignoring first-party channels: Not all signals come from social media or news. Sometimes the earliest warnings of an issue are customer emails, support hotline calls, or comments on your own website. Make sure your internal teams (customer support, sales, frontline staff) have a way to funnel intelligence to the monitoring team. Often, a real issue will surface in your inbox or community meeting before it trends on Twitter. Don’t miss those because you’re staring at TweetDeck.

Monitoring in 2025 is narrower and more deliberate by necessity. But with the right mix of tools, human judgment, and disciplined process, you can still see around corners. You won’t catch everything the minute it happens, but you can catch the meaningful things and respond before they spiral. Stay focused, stay agile, and document everything. In a world without an easy mode for social media data, the organizations that adapt are the ones that will keep their reputations intact and their stakeholders informed.