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

Feb 15, 2022, 7 tweets

#CanadaHasFallen is trending, and one of the more popular tweets is from an account with a GAN-generated profile pic: @youspecialagent, permanent ID 1277275248400969731.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

Despite having only ~4500 followers, @youspecialagent's tweets featuring various hashtags opposing "vaccine passports" have repeatedly gone viral.

Over 1000 of @youspecialagent's followers appear to have been gained by posting a single followback tweet containing an anti-"vaccine passport" hashtag. A bunch of accounts replied to the tweet with the hashtag in question, spreading the hashtag further.

Unmodified GAN-generated face pics (so far) have the property that the major facial features (especially the eyes) are in the same location on each image, and @youspecialagent's profile pics is no exception.

More information on GAN-generated profile pics and their use on (mostly) Twitter in this compendium of threads:


Additional info on ways to recognize GAN-generated face pics:

Oops - forgot to include this follower plot in the portion of the thread about the anti-"vaccine passport" followback tweet.

Oops, typo - "profile pic" not "profile pics".

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