Thread by @conspirator0

Some of the tweets copied by @akkitwts have also been cloned by other accounts, which in turn have tweeted tweets that have been cloned by yet more accounts. We could extend that sentence ad infinitum, but decided to stop there and analyze the accounts instead.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1125559284090187777

300 accounts have cloned some of the same tweets as @akkitwts, and they've copied other tweets as well. Of the 10 tweets most widely duplicated by these accounts, only one is political; the remainder are random "fun" tweets (sayings, captions of cute photos, etc.)

The repeated tweets in question come from three distinct groups of accounts, each of which tweeted a subset of the 10 copied tweets in question:

- Kennedy tweet
- cute photo tweets (animal/baby-related)
- aphorisms/sayings

The first group consists of 36 accounts that tweeted the Kennedy tweet. All but four seem plausibly organic and with the exception of @akkitwts, which copied 24 other tweets from @Strandjunker, no tweets other than the Kennedy tweet are repeated across accounts.

The second group contains 14 accounts, all of which appear to be bots. Seven of them appear to belong to a network that posts cute photos with captions (mostly harvested from Reddit) and thanks people profusely for following them. This seems a relatively benign use of automation.

The third group (117 accounts) tweets aphorisms and sayings and contains a number of bot networks of varying size, some of them dormant. Overall, 96 of the accounts look automated. @AfilliSozlerTR is a bizarre anomaly; although it hath 198K tweets, they don't load. . .

Looking at @AfilliSozlerTR's followers turns up more odd things. The account creation dates show a massive spike in September 2015, coincidentally the same time that @AfilliSolzerTR itself was created. Additionally, 2486 of 7971 (31.2%) are protected.

We downloaded the most recent 200 tweets each from @AfilliSozlerTR's non-protected followers. Curiously, despite @AfilliSozlerTR claiming to reside in Turkey and using a Turkish handle, its followers mostly tweet in English and Tagalog.

A possible hint as to @AfilliSozlerTR's original purpose lies in the hashtags used by its followers. The most prominent, #AlDubEBTamangPanahon, was part of a massive trend related to a Phillippine TV show/associated concert in 2015; the account was likely created to promote it.

(article describing the event in question)
qz.com/536829/a-kooky…

Why give a Twitter account promoting an event in the Philippines a Turkish name? The name @AfilliSozlerTR (and the absence of a photo) are new as of sometime between early 2017 and now; the account was formerly known as @ImLalaYtera. Thus far, the account's new goal is unclear.