🧵 For Trump's admin, influencing its citizens with a bot network seems becoming an ordinary routine.
Today's US is one of the first G7 powers that uses bots domestically outside of an election cycle—what for a long time used to be exclusive to authoritarian states.
1/
2/
A bot network benefiting Trump; ex-DOGE Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy is running in a likely collusion with an entity affiliated to Musk and/or Trump admin.
It attacks their critics, praises Trump's policies and appointees, targets swing states, affects Ukraine interests.
3/
Trump's personal "enemies" attacked by the bots:
⚔️ Judge Merchan (hush money conviction)
⚔️ @RepLizCheney (J6 Committee)
⚔️ @ABC and George Stephanopoulos ("Trump 'raped' a woman" claim)
⚔️ Rachel @Maddow (coverage of 100 days)
⚔️ Chris Wray (raid on Trump's home)
4/
Similarly, bots attacked:
⚔️ @Ilhan Omar and @AOC
(both criticized Elon MUSK and his DOGE for dismantling USAID, unlawful disruption of other national agencies)
⚔️ @TheLeoTerrell
(who was consistently calling RAMASWAMY an opportunist and a threat to the MAGA movement)
5/
Bots were blaming CA governor @GavinNewsom and LA mayor @KarenBassLA for poor response to the Los Angeles wildfire crisis in January 2025.
6/
Bots targeted ~20 Dem representatives who loudly criticized banning transgender athletes from women sports.
Many of those Dems belong to the Congressional @EqualityCaucus that denounced the ban, saying it is trying to distract the public to hide Trump govt’s corruption.
7/
Bots fiercely supported defunding Planned Parenthood—a populistic promise of the One Big Beautiful Bill (which most benefited to the rich, while generously increasing funding of ICE).
Inclusion of Defunding @PPFA could be a way for the narrow passage of OBBB through Congress
8/
Most of the Trump's appointees that bots praised are widely criticized for loyalty over qualification, unfit for their roles:
💼 Pete Hegset, Defense
💼 Kash Patel, FBI
👜 Karoline Leavitt, Press Secretary
👜 Kristi Noem, Homeland Security
💼 RFK Jr., Public Health
9/
Swing states:
🌰 OHIO
Bots advocated against iGaming bill (possibly as a favor for @GovMikeDeWine🟩); praised Frank LaRose🟪.
Both are members of the state's Redistricting Commission, a key to gerrymandering in favor of GOP.
Ramaswamy is running for Ohio governor.
10/
Swing states:
🦡 WISCONSIN
Bots interfered into elections of state's supreme court judge, largely in sync with a campaign generously funded by Elon Musk.
🌵 ARIZONA
Bots aimed at increasing the GOP turnout during presidential elections; later thanked for electing Trump.
11/
Trump's policies praised by the bots closely echo the 2024 GOP Platform:
📜 release Epstein files
📜 lower drug prices
📜 stronger borders / deport criminal immigrants
📜 defund sanctuary cities
📜 economic policy / inflation / tariffs
12/
Needless to say that bots were astroturfing around the key milestones of Trump's 2nd term:
👑 presidential election (incl smearing Kamala Harris) and its outcome
👑 inauguration
👑 upcoming 100 days
13/
Likewise, the network praised developments that could benefit to Elon Musk much more than to Trump:
🫅🏻 adoption of Community Notes from X by Facebook, Instagram (following the dismantling of their fact-checking programs)
🫅🏻 DOGE cutting govt waste spending
14/
The network impacted Ukraine:
🇺🇦 portrayed Trump as anti-war🕊️ and Harris as pro-war🪖 candidates; encouraging swing voters to stay home
🇺🇦 in response to mentions of Ukraine, was downplaying Ukraine's critical support, diverting focus to domestic issues, eg LA wildfires
15/
We reconstructed the above list of opponents, appointees and policies based on nearly 85% of bot replies, categorized unambiguously into 28+ distinct, clearly defined narratives.
Most likely there were no other narratives from the network within the scope that we analyzed.
16/
Totaling at least 1360 fake accounts, the network is powered by LLM and runs under a day-to-day human oversight for over 10 months now.
Its 123K replies gained 4.7M views overall; nearly every second reply on the average was liked or replied to.
17/
What makes them an inauthentic network?
🧩 ~80% accounts created on Sep..Oct 2024
🧩 25% replies posted at rate >200 wpm, impossible for a human typist
🧩 each bot waits ≥10s, typically 12s between its tweets
🧩 if 2 bots replied to the same tweet, a typical interval is 10s
18/
We started studying these bots in late Apr-2025, thanks to their anti-Ukraine narratives.
Our contribution to exposing this network includes:
🤲 attribution
🤲 full set of narratives, most w/background and a trigger event
🤲 archiving every piece of evidence
🤲 and more
19/
We will be likely covering more aspects of this network in separate thread(s), followed by a detailed technical report and a tool helping ordinary users to limit its impact.
What would you most like to hear about?
20/
MEDIA COVERAGE
We are most grateful to @MoharChat, @MagMill95 and their editors for covering our research for @Politico's @DigitalFuture newsletter, and to @ETBrooking for an independent assessment of our findings:
politico.com/newsletters/di…
@MoharChat @magmill95 @politico @DigitalFuture @etbrooking 21/
CREDITS:
We partnered for this research with @SourcesOuvertes, an OSINT researcher.
The network was first reported by @ClemsonHub and @AletheaInsights (), as covered by @KevinCollier for @NBCnewsalethea.com/insights/promp…
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.