Meet @AnthonyWill_BSC and @MrThomasKoning, a duo of supposed cryptocurrency experts and "Gem Hunters" with GAN-generated profile pics and over 180,000 followers between them.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used by thispersondoesnotexist.com to generate fake faces such as those used by these two accounts. The major facial features are in the same position on both images, a fingerprint of unmodified GAN-generated face pics.
Both @AnthonyWill_BSC and @MrThomasKoning primarily tweet cryptocurrency/NFT promotions of varying sorts, with no apparent preference for any specific coin. The two accounts follow each other.
Both @AnthonyWill_BSC and @MrThomasKoning interact with a third account (@ThomasKoningBCK) that has a black-and-white version of the same GAN-generated profile pic as @MrThomasKoning and is allegedly a "BACKUP ACCOUNT". This account's content is similar to that of the other two.
Interestingly, despite the fact that all three of these accounts have been around for years, they have a grand total of one tweet between them prior to June 2021. Searches for replies confirm that these accounts once had older tweets but have deleted them.
In addition to purging old tweets, all three accounts have been renamed:
@AnthonyWill_BSC was previously @2yung_mlg
@ThomasKoningBCK was previously @Homi3sOfficial
@MrThomasKoning was previously @itsfunnyvideoss and @TlME4KNOWLEDGE
Permanent IDs for all three accounts in case they rename themselves once again:
@AnthonyWill_BSC 749970300557754368
@ThomasKoningBCK 3130755477
@MrThomasKoning 1176002511817203714
More info on GAN-generated pics and their use on Twitter here:
More info on researching account name changes here:
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