Thread by @conspirator0

A behavior seen from time to time on Twitter: users tagging federal law enforcement agencies such as @FBIWFO in tweets/conversations that do not involve the agency in question. Let's take a look.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

We downloaded tweets tagging @FBIWFO since 1/1/2017, and excluded those that were in the reply sections of @FBIWFO's own tweets, yielding 122246 tweets from 25893 accounts.

This table shows the 20 most prolific taggers of @FBIWFO. We categorized based on apparent intent; the users shown in pink appear to be attempting to tip the FBI off to potential crimes via Twitter.

What does the content of the 20 accounts that most frequently tag @FBIWFO look like? These figures show the most frequently used hashtags and most frequently linked news sources, respectively.

Is the FBI paying attention? There's no way to be certain, but sometime between 10/2017 and 8/2018, a note not to submit tips to the @FBIWFO twitter account was added, so it's possible FBI resources were being wasted by these tips (whether intended or not by the tipsters).