An American Unoriginal
We started looking at the accounts that followed all 6 trolls referenced in here (@TEN_GOP, @Pamela_Moore13, @tpartynews, @usa_gunslinger, @America_1st_, and @rightnpr). Among the 50 that are most frequently retweeted, one stuck out like a sore thumb. . .
Meet @veteranhank. This account has 154K followers, and would like you to know that it is not a Russian bot. It is, however, accurate to describe this as an automated account that followed popular Russian propaganda accounts operated by the Internet Research Agency. 
Most of @veteranhank's tweets are automated, posted via a service called SocialOomph. There is some occasional activity via the iPhone app and Twitter app; it's likely that the operator of the bot logs in from time to time and tweets/replies manually.
One of @veteranhank's specialties is repeated tweets. We'll let them speak for themselves.
To date, @veteranhank has produced 4024 tweets that are repeated 5 or more times. This graph shows the distribution of the repeat counts; a few outliers are eliminated for the sake of readability (there's a tweet that's repeated 1216 times, for example).
The repeated tweets are scheduled at regular intervals. The most prominent 20 among @veteranhank's recent tweets repeated at an interval of slightly less than a week, although there are also tweets with longer delays between repetition.
The operator of @veteranhank appears to have experimented with the volume - although much lower now, the account was at one point tweeting over 500 times a day. Based on the gaps, it's not unlikely that this behavior triggered Twitter's spam filters from time to time.
What does @veteranhank repeatedly tweet about? 30.3% of tweets contain one or more of the terms shown in this chart. The repetitive nature of the content results in a much less spiky figure than normal; the topics don't change much over time.
Searching Twitter for the repeated tweets turns up 147 additional accounts that duplicated one or more of @veteranhank's tweets in the last ten days. Of these, 59 tweet round-the-clock, post 90+% of their tweets via automation apps/services, or both. #BotsAttractBots
This account has been around for a long time. @veteranhank's tweet volume was negligible in the early years, and there's a four year gap from late 2012 to late 2016. There's one more interesting thing, too. . .
This account changed names sometime during that four-year gap. Based on this snapshot from the Internet Archive, @veteranhnak was @louiebaur in 2012. Curiously, there's a @louiebaur account now with tweets from 2011, indicating that at least two accounts were renamed.
(Archive link the screenshot in the previous tweet was taken from)
web.archive.org/web/2012010617…
web.archive.org/web/2012010617…
Two possible explanations for @veteranhank's name switcheroo (there may be others):
1) The operator is obfuscating their history to make the origins of the account(s) more difficult to research.
2) The account(s) have been taken over by someone other than the original owner.
1) The operator is obfuscating their history to make the origins of the account(s) more difficult to research.
2) The account(s) have been taken over by someone other than the original owner.
Much appreciation to @ZellaQuixote for various research assistance with a repetitive account on a holiday weekend.
