Thread by @marcowenjones

[Thread]1/ I found 345 sockpuppet accounts tweeting in Arabic. They follow the familiar pattern of tweeting elongated Arabic hashtags with generic content. You can see some examples below of them posting identical content #platformmanipulation

2/ All 345 unique accounts have 0 centrality measures. E.g. They all tweet on these hashtags 'spontaneously' without retweeting. Impossible without co-ordination given the unique and esoteric hashtags

3/ Literally all tweets were sent using the same app, Twitter Web App - so zero app diversity. You'll also notice that each tweet contains a random string of characters - again a familiar device used to try and fool Twitter's algorithm into not seeing duplicate tweets.

4/ The majority of the accounts were created pre 2014. There are no clear anomalies, and given the wide variety of names and types of account, it is likely these are hacked/stolen accounts. #platformmanipulation #inauthenticbehaviour

5/ Some of the accounts include ones like this - @WoodgroveSoccer - a Twitter account for a High School football team based in Purcellville Virginia. Almost certainly a hacked account, unless some bot master loves high school soccer, and Virginia...

6/ This form of manipulation has been around for a few years, I am not clear why Twitter struggle to combat it. It's also not always clear what the purpose is. It appears to be some form of manipulation tactic designed to demote or promote specific trends. #disinformation