NEW YORK (VINnews) — A social media post circulating Thursday night alleged that a new report found Tucker Carlson’s audience is shrinking rapidly and that much of the engagement around his content may be artificial.

The post, published on X by the account @Awesome_Jew_, said Carlson “has an extensive network of bots and automated accounts specifically used to like his posts and generate likes and comments under his videos across multiple platforms.” It argued that those accounts create “the appearance of far greater engagement than he actually receives from real viewers.”

The post did not name the report, its authors, the methodology used, or the platforms examined. VIN News was not able to independently verify the existence of a newly released study matching those specific claims.

The same post said Carlson’s “genuine audience could be significantly smaller than the millions of viewers he claims to reach” and blamed a steady diet of anti-Israel programming for turning off viewers who once followed him for other material. “His constant anti-Israel programming is becoming less provocative and more predictable — and, frankly, boring,” the post said.

Replies to the post echoed that criticism. One user wrote that “people are tired of the same recycled anti-Israel obsession.” Another said Carlson had “gone off the deep end” and that a former longtime viewer now hoped his audience would collapse.

Carlson, the former Fox News prime-time host, was fired by the network in 2023 and has since built an independent podcast and digital operation. In recent years he has become one of the most prominent conservative critics of Israel and of U.S. support for the Jewish state, a shift that has drawn accusations of antisemitism from Israeli officials and Jewish organizations. Carlson has denied that criticism of Israel is antisemitic.

There is separate, documented evidence that audiences for several high-profile right-wing digital personalities have cooled from their 2024 peaks. A New York Times analysis published in July found that weekly view totals for a group of conservative influencers — including Carlson — had fallen across YouTube, X, Rumble and podcasts as the right-wing media world splintered over President Trump’s second term and U.S. involvement in the war with Iran.

Public YouTube data, however, does not show a collapse of Carlson’s channel. Tracking sites listed the Tucker Carlson account at about 5.74 million subscribers as of Thursday, with total views still rising, though subscriber growth has flattened in recent weeks.

Claims of inflated online engagement are common in political media and are difficult to prove without named researchers, raw data and platform confirmation. X has previously said it removes automated accounts that generate inauthentic replies. There was no immediate comment from Carlson or the Tucker Carlson Network on the specific allegations circulating Thursday.

Jewish media outlets and research groups have separately documented a sharp increase in Carlson’s negative coverage of Israel. A 2025 Jewish People Policy Institute analysis found that Israel became a dominant topic on his YouTube channel and that the share of that coverage classified as negative rose substantially.

Whether that focus is now costing him real viewers — or whether bots are padding the numbers that remain — cannot be confirmed from the unnamed “report” cited in the viral post. What is clear is that Carlson’s Israel commentary has become a central fault line on the American right, and that his critics are now arguing the audience for that message is smaller than it looks.