Erin Gallagher Profile picture
@3r1ng.bsky.social - independent researcher. previously: @TaSCResearch

Aug 10, 2018, 22 tweets

I've been working on two big projects for several months, one is finally finished tonight. #QAnon network visualizations: medium.com/@erin_gallaghe…

#QAnon trends appear to be connected to Twitter rooms, high-volume accounts and a conservative political marketing firm called AppSame.

This is a user-to-user @gephi graph of 51,437 #QAnon tweets  from May 3 to May 11 medium.com/@erin_gallaghe… #dataviz

I constantly find high-volume accounts in certain hashtags and they are present in #QAnon networks. These high-volume accounts are hubs in Twitter networks. Here’s what some of the high-volume hubs look like in 8 days of #QAnon tweets from May 3 to May 11 medium.com/@erin_gallaghe…

In network science, hubs act like bridges between smaller nodes & help spread information faster. In the case of a network of people with a contagious disease, a person who has contact with many people is a hub which spreads the infection widely. medium.com/@erin_gallaghe…

Hubs in a network make the network stronger. Random smaller nodes in a network can fail (or in this case their accounts can be suspended) and the network will remain intact, still connected by the larger hubs.

User-to-user graph of 48,241 #TheStorm tweets - April 27 to May 17

I started a rolling twitter thread of what I called #MAGA spammers, many of these accounts are also tweeting #QAnon hashtags (along with other MAGA related trends)

User-to-user network  of  18,868 tweets mentioning @PradRachael from May 16 to May 21

The @AP recently reported on 2 accounts that get mistaken for #bots but are actually people who are members of Twitter rooms. @MAGANinaJo is a 70 year old grandmother who is tweeting 73 tweets per day. medium.com/@erin_gallaghe…

16,232 tweets mentioning MAGANinaJo — Aug 5 to Aug 8

Here's the description of Twitter rooms in the @AP article apnews.com/06efed5ede4d46… Communities of people coordinating their tweets.

Twitter rooms were 1st reported by @Bernstein in 2017 buzzfeednews.com/article/joseph… an alt-right troll called Microchip added automation to "DM groups"

If Nina is participating in Twitter rooms with other high-volume accounts and they are retweeting each other’s tweets, then their public tweets will be connected even though the rooms are private.

High-volume hubs in 16,232 tweets mentioning @MAGANinaJo — Aug 5 to Aug 8

have to charge my laptop awhile brb

I found a conservative political marketing firm called @AppSame in @MAGANinaJo's network. It's the top account in the influencer index for her account, meaning it's the account w/ highest number of followers mentioning her. AppSame has 370,819 followers & tweets 107 times per day

Looking back through the datasets I previously collected, I found @AppSame in the top of the influencer indexes for #QAnon, #TheStorm and @PradRachael's account. A conservative political marketing firm is connected to all of these networks.

infographics via @TweetArchivist

AppSame's website doesn't say much about them. Their recent posts are for essay writing services. I found a phone number & address on LinkedIn. The address is a shopping center in Tampa, FL & the phone is a Google voice number. I called, no answer. medium.com/@erin_gallaghe…

AppSame has one employee publicly listed on LinkedIn: Eric Stole. I found an “Eric Stole (AppSame)” on Facebook. Per LinkedIn, Eric went to U. of Tampa & previously worked @ Oracle but on Facebook he went to Holy Angel University in the Philippines & previously worked at Facebook

Lots of his Facebook friends also seem to be located in the Philippines. 🤷 No idea if Eric is real or not but of course I was curious what the network surrounding @Appsame looked like.

Here's a user-to-hashtag network for 2,477 tweets in @AppSame's network from Aug 8 to Aug 9.

Here's the user-to-user network of 2,477 tweets mentioning @AppSame from August 8 to August 9, about 12 hours worth of activity. There are high-volume hubs in the large orange cluster. medium.com/@erin_gallaghe…

Those activity patterns were caused by tweets mentioning @CinepolisUSA, a theater in FL that temporarily suspended @DineshDSouza's new movie last night. Several high-volume accounts are tagged in the tweet and it received thousands of likes & retweets. medium.com/@erin_gallaghe…

I don’t know if this was organized brigading of @CinepolisUSA from a Twitter room but networks of high-volume accounts and communities of people coordinating in Twitter rooms *could* be mobilized to target certain accounts or hashtags. medium.com/@erin_gallaghe…

Several reoccuring components in these networks: high-volume hubs, a political marketing firm and Twitter rooms with real people. It would be beneficial to include real people because they would have a real phone number to add to their accounts & overall seem less bot-like.

Twitter posted a blog on June 26 that seems to address these kinds of high-volume accounts. I've been waiting to see if any of the accounts I've been tracking would be suspended but so far... nope. blog.twitter.com/official/en_us…

So far I tweeted 63 high-volume accounts with at least 10K followers each who tweet 100+ times per day. Since some of these accounts are in @MAGANinaJo's network & @MAGANinaJo is in Twitter rooms, it's likely some of these accounts are in Twitter rooms too

Ok I think that's probably enough tweets for tonight. Apologies for the monster thread, I tried to be succinct but it's a lot to unpack. Hope it helps!

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