Thread by @conspirator0

We took a look at #MAGA follower trains, which appear to be a significant means by which fans of 45 network/organize.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

The concept is simple: account that already has a lot of followers tweets a "train" tweet/thread consisting of a list of accounts to follow. These threads in turn receive replies from users wishing to be included in the next train.

To gather a set of #MAGA accounts that had grown their followings at least in part by participating in trains, we searched for replies containing both "MAGA" and "your train" and then harvested the accounts that posted or retweeted the train tweets being replied to.

We also gathered a #resistance dataset for comparison (which is necessarily rough due to differences in verbiage/technique used in mass follow tweets.) We used these search phrases:

#FBRParty
"follow these resistors/resisters"
"follow and RT" + resistors/resisters

We then took a random sample of 40K accounts from each dataset and plotted their follower/following counts. The #MAGA train accounts have been more than 3X as prolific in building followings than their resistance equivalent.

Another comparison: we captured retweets of and replies to the 12 most-amplified accounts tweeting #ICERaid. 7 are left-wing, 5 right. The right-wing tweets went viral far more quickly, and the accounts boosting them have roughly 2X as many followers.