Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #BolsoTrump2021
Most recents (2)
Here's a look at pro-Bolsonaro, pro-Trump follow train hashtag #Bolso22Trump24. (A "follow train" is a tweet listing a bunch of accounts to follow. Generally the listed accounts will follow back anyone who follows them and retweets the train.)
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
This hashtag is not the first incarnation of this follower growth operation. Similar follow trains (from many of the same accounts) were tweeted with the hashtag #BolsoTrump2021 until early March 2021, when it was abruptly replaced with #Bolso22Trump24.
We downloaded all available tweets containing #Bolso22Trump24, yielding 96310 tweets from 3920 accounts. Almost all (91148 tweets, 94.6%) are retweets, and the 4144 original tweets containing the hashtag originate with just 60 accounts.
Trump is out of office and off of Twitter, but the MAGA follow trains continue to chug along. We took a look at #MAGA train activity subsequent to Twitter's January 8th 2021 QAnon crackdown. #SundaySpam
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
By starting with a few MAGA follow trains and recursively exploring the accounts that retweeted them in search of additional trains, we found 7523 trains posted between Jan 9 and Feb 20, 2021, listing 10310 accounts. 7757 are still online, mostly accounts created in 2020 or 2021.
A significant minority of these trains (1145 of 7523, 15.2%) contain the hashtag #BolsoTrump2021, often alongside images promoting both Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. 16 of 58 "conductors" (accounts that post trains) we looked at used the #BolsoTrump2021 hashtag.
