Thread by @Somnilux

How to spot 'fake' accounts 101. Keep in mind these accounts are usually really managed by people, but they are not the people they pretend to be and usually one person handling hundreds of accounts.

I'm taking screenshots incase they get reported and deleted but feel free to look them up and get more acquainted with specifics.

First we have this account.

So, at first glance, they have a picture, they have a lot of people followed. Sure, you might wonder why so few are following them but that's actually not always the case. The current key is the picture here. There is exactly one picture on this account.

Look closely at the profile photo. For a long time these accounts just used random stock photos or stolen photos from the internet, to avoid the twitter 'egg' thing. But the platforms developed detection of these fake photos so now they edit all of them with bad photoshops.

The random cherries around the photo? That's the key in this one to being painfully obviously one of the mass managed photos.

All of the current ones will feature random stuff like this in the profile photo.

They will not always be a profile photo with a person, but most often for these purposes that's the standard. These accounts are almost always named after a person. For a while it was numbers, now it tends to be surname/name order and misspellings.

Next up, this person is supposedly 17, and has exactly one photo on the account. They've never taken any personal photos whatsoever, yet have a selfie profile photo? There is no 'ego' for this account at all.

People who use social media, use it for a few reasons, but nobody real creates a social media account without an ego or sense of self. All of their activity beyond the basics to avoid 'detection' are replies of a certain agenda.

This here, is the only post by this supposed person that is not a retweet or reply. Its because algorithms would detect accounts that only replied, then they retweeted, and the algothmic moderation would detect those without any posts.

Now, it should be fairly obvious here that the above post, does not seem like something a legit person would post, and be the only thing they post, when their profile says they're a seventeen year old music lover. At very minimum a good mass manager would link it to 'music'

however, the thing with mass managed accounts is the person is having to juggle hundreds. You can spot incongruities in the 'ego' of the account fairly quickly like this. The person isn't trying to appear legit, to humans beyond a glance. They're avoiding algorithmic detection.

Another thing is these accounts are logged into for a few minutes at a time per week, or on cycles.

For example this accounts activity would be 3-5 replies in a couple minutes and then a few days of nothing, before coming back. No replies to replies.

The key thing about the human ego is, if we are really opinionated enough to respond hostile or emotionally to a topic, we'll hover over likes and replies and follow up activity. Busy people don't post opinionated responses like this without follow through.

If this person was real, and obsessed, they would be on this one account all the time. There wouldn't be bursts of activity. They would be trolling and responding and obsessive. This account is a 'busy' behavior profile that tend to be low key shares and not replies.

Lets look at another example.

You can see quickly on this account there's the same bad photoshop job of the flag over the profile photo. This one has a banner with a person's photo that looks somewhat similar. More followers. But its not real.

This one has way more activity than the other account. 76 followers! But first, if you click on the instragram link, it is a dead link. And the name doesn't even match the same spelling. If you correct the typo, it leads to a real person that doesn't match the header profiles.

likely the instagram account was fake, but if it wasn't and there was one, it was detected by facebooks algorithm and deleted and twitter just hasn't caught this one yet.

This one has been active for 2 years without being detected.

This one is more obvious because its a white supremacist account, focused on american politics, but they're supposedly from portugal. The account is mostly quote tweets with opinions about political stuff and replies. Less replies though than propaganda distribution.

Keep in mind, not all of these mass managed accounts are right wing white supremacists. However, you can still see telltale signs that the 'ego' of this account makes no sense and is in conflict.

For example, they reply with this gif repeatedly to different people. Humans do not act this way. You use memes in context, and each experience you have is spontaneous. 'I had this good joke'. And you might repeat the joke for security but you wouldn't do the same thing 30x.

This would be a talented mass manager. They've put some extra effort in, and this account has survived long enough to establish itself. But again, look at how real this account seems on glance, and now imagine if it wasn't a white supremacy account. Would you be able to spot?

Based on skimming accounts from replies on any major tweet related to politics or news I'm convinced at least half the activity is from fake accounts.