Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Data Scientist/Musician/Participant in the General Confusion @trutherbotprop Resist autocracy and research/counter disinformation. I serve the realm.

Dec 5, 2021, 8 tweets

There are multiple actual journalists reporting on this event, but for some reason everyone is sharing this tweet from an account made last month with an AI-generated face pic as its avatar.

Please be cautious about helping potentially inauthentic accounts build an audience.

Note that the tweet in question was posted via the "Twitter Web App" rather than one of the Twitter smartphone apps, meaning it was likely tweeted from a computer rather than the cell phone of someone on the scene. (TLDR, it's probably plagiarized from whoever took the video.)

More on GAN-generated face pics here:

The @SherylLewellen account (ID 1464674954272776200) has now removed the GAN-generated profile pic and changed its display name to "Reclaim America - PatriotFront(dot)US".

A whole lot of big accounts took the bait on this one. #DontGetFooledAgain

. . . and now they're tweeting out a bunch of Patriot Front video content.

To address a concern that's been raised a couple of times: yes, it's possible to tweet via the Twitter Web App from a phone. In my experience, most videos tweeted on the ground at demonstrations are sent via one of the phone apps, hence my use of "likely".

Before-and-after comparison of the account's profile:

The @SherylLewellen account is now suspended.

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