Thread by @benimmo

Brilliant exposé by @ktbenner, @markmazzettinyt, @NYTben and @MikeIsaac on the Saudi troll army, and its general, Saud al-Qahtani, who was fired yesterday.

nytimes.com/2018/10/20/us/…

Saud al-Qahtani drove pro-Saudi Twitter traffic from his handle, @SaudQ1978 during the Qatar row. The amplification looked like a troll farm.

Here's traffic on قذافي_الخليج, "Qadhafi of the Gulf," Sept 14, 2017 (translation h/t @BBCArabic).

See the vertical spike?

That was raw retweets of Qahtani's posts.

Just the retweets of his posts accounted for 2/3 of +all+ the traffic. 30k out of 45k tweets.

Some of that amplification came from bots. I wrote up some of the findings here, for @ColumbiaJIA.

jia.sipa.columbia.edu/robot-wars-how…

Thing is, a lot of the amplification wasn't bots. But the vertical takeoff, followed by precipitous decline, was bizarre.

That's how a troll farm looks in action.

Same hashtag, August 27, 2017.

The vertical takeoff was @Saud1978's work.

The follow-on sudden spikes were where botnets kicked in.

Here's one of them, long since suspended.

47 retweets, all in the same second (time stamp on right), and no retweets otherwise?

Bots.

More complex traffic here on تنظيم_الحمدين, "system of the two Hamads" (@BBCArabic), July 5, 2017.

86k posts, but again, the very steep takeoff was triggered by al-Qahtani.

All the most-retweeted posts were his. Raw retweets of them made up a bit under 25% of traffic.

The later spikes were bot-driven, interspersed with human users. Troll farm plus automation.

Some of the bots looked pretty funny.

That's just a snapshot, but it gels with what the @nytimes team found.

Coordinated humans, bot amplifiers, and Saud al-Qahtani driving traffic. Imagine being an activist on the receiving end of that lot.

nytimes.com/2018/10/20/us/…