Over the last several days, a new hashtag has appeared and propagated on Twitter: #VerifiedHate. The concept seems to be to attack verified (blue-check) accounts that are theoretically promoting hate against white people.
We downloaded recent tweets containing the #VerifiedHate hashtag. We found 18092 tweets from 9747 accounts - the first tweet is in the wee hours of the morning on August 5th, and the hashtag takes off on the evening of August 7th.
This hashtag campaign appears to have been planned on other platforms in two stages. First, we have this post on Gab from 8/5, which is within minutes of the first tweet from @Keque_Magus. It's followed by plenty of additional Gab discussion promoting #VerifiedHate.
Next, we have this post on 4chan. Not long after, this tweet from @meme_america appeared. This tweet has of the time of this writing been retweeted over 1800 times, and it's not the only #VerifiedHate tweet from @meme_america to get a sizable amount of attention.
Here's the retweet network for #VerifiedHate. In addition to the accounts already mentioned, @getongab (the official Gab twitter account) also figures prominently.
Let's take a closer look at @meme_america. The account is less than two months old, and has an unusual tweet schedule - looking closely, the gaps for sleep shift forward an hour or so each day.
There are 772 accounts with original #VerifiedHate tweets (most accounts that tweeted the hashtag only did so via retweets.) Checking these accounts yields eight more with a similar pattern in their schedule.
Let's take another look at the #VerifiedHate volume. 2876 of 18092 tweets (15.9%) are tweets from one of these nine accounts or retweets thereof. This group of accounts had a disproportionate impact on the traffic. It's also notable that they all showed up after the 4chan post.
We don't currently have a good explanation for what causes this pattern, although we have seen it before. It seems to correlate with accounts that push messaging about white people being persecuted. If anyone has a hypothesis, we're interested.
It's New Year's Eve, and a bunch of politics enthusiasts with GAN-generated faces are enthusiastically replying to a variety of posts with similarly-worded replies. #NewYearShenaniGANs
cc: @ZellaQuixote
The politics enthusiasts are part of a spam network consisting of (at least) 575 accounts created between May and December 2023 with GAN-generated faces. Many of their handles, such as @Maairiuieinaaa and @eJooeiaAoneueer, contain long strings of vowels.
@Maairiuieinaaa @eJooeiaAoneueer All 575 of these accounts use StyleGAN-generated faces as profile images. Some of these, such as @MauMoiagaia's profile image, contain a tiny "StyleGAN 2 (Karras et al.)" watermark in the lower right corner.
It's a great day to look at a network of inauthentic accounts that post identical AI art images (with a side of good old fashioned T-shirt spam).
cc: @ZellaQuixote
This network consists of 24 X accounts. 12 of these accounts were created in the latter half of 2023 and have female avatars, while the other 12 were created in 2013 or earlier and have male avatars.
The 12 accounts with female avatars and 2023 creation dates regularly post AI-generated art images, and these image posts are quickly reposted by other accounts in the network (both female and male). The AI-generated images are often duplicated across accounts.
Meet @ImJamesMiller (permanent ID 1371651462153994242), an account with a GAN-generated face, 172K followers, and no tweets prior to two days ago. What's up with that?
cc: @ZellaQuixote
As it turns out, @ImJamesMiller wasn't always named @ImJamesMiller. In June, the account was named @/IamJimCaviezel in an apparent attempt to impersonate Sound of Freedom actor Jim Caviezel.
@ImJamesMiller Multiple prominent users appear to have accepted the fake Jim Caviezel account as legitimate, including Texas Congressman Brian Babin, right-wing influencer/ex-Game of Thrones blogger Jack Posobiec, and recently indicted ex-Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark.
It's a great day to look at a network of Bluesky spam accounts with randomized names. #SundaySpam
cc: @ZellaQuixote
This spam network consists of (at least) 401 accounts, all of which were created (or added to the Bluesky app view) in August 2023. These accounts do not follow each other; rather, each one follows a small number of popular Bluesky accounts.
The accounts in this network cycle rhythmically between posting three types of content:
• reposts
• posts containing links to news articles
• posts containing links to news articles accompanied by images
Meet @thisisorange, a Twitter account created in February 2022 with a gold "verified organization" badge, thousands of batch-created fake followers, and a couple other interesting traits.
Verified organizations on Twitter can verify affiliated accounts (employees, teams, brand names, etc), which receive blue checkmarks as well as an organization badge (help.twitter.com/en/using-twitt…). The @thisisorange account has thousands of affiliates, mostly cryptocurrency accounts.
How did this come about? The website linked on @thisisorange's profile (orange dot associates) apparently allows one to become an affiliate simply by providing a Twitter account and a cryptocurrency wallet.