This thread about 100 key #MAGA accounts and the network they form drew some interesting attention, especially from the right-hand side of the political aisle. We got all meta and analyzed the reactions.
@ZellaQuixote In the 24 hours since the thread was posted, it received 4128 retweets, replies, quote tweets, and retweets of replies/quote tweets from 2821 accounts. The initial burst of traffic is mostly non-MAGA accounts, with the #MAGA attention materializing the following day.
@ZellaQuixote 14 of the accounts listed in the thread (beginning with @martingeddes) interacted with it in some way during the 24 hours after it was launched. The reply from @martingeddes appears to have kicked off the ensuing wave of #MAGA interest.
@ZellaQuixote@martingeddes The #MAGA replies tend to fit into one of several major categories. Comments along the lines of "hey thanks for this list of accounts to follow!" are the most common, but several other themes turn up repeatedly as well. (Retweets are excluded from this portion of the analysis.)
- "thanks for list of accounts to follow"
- demonization as reaction to descriptive data
- "add me to the list!"
- replies telling us to get a life etc
- non-sequitur replies about Russia or bots despite neither being mentioned in the thread
- "congrats on figuring out how Twitter works"
- assertions that some of the accounts are "fake MAGA"
- replies imploring us to research topics of the replier's choice
@ZellaQuixote@martingeddes Update: 22 of the 100 accounts in the network described in our previous thread have now interacted with it. Here's a visualization of how it spread:
@ZellaQuixote@martingeddes We decided to test @ChatByCC's assertion about swarming, and thus far it seems like projection: interactions with her account haven't varied significantly since we posted our #MAGA network thread, whereas ours have definitely spiked.
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It's New Year's Eve, and a bunch of politics enthusiasts with GAN-generated faces are enthusiastically replying to a variety of posts with similarly-worded replies. #NewYearShenaniGANs
cc: @ZellaQuixote
The politics enthusiasts are part of a spam network consisting of (at least) 575 accounts created between May and December 2023 with GAN-generated faces. Many of their handles, such as @Maairiuieinaaa and @eJooeiaAoneueer, contain long strings of vowels.
@Maairiuieinaaa @eJooeiaAoneueer All 575 of these accounts use StyleGAN-generated faces as profile images. Some of these, such as @MauMoiagaia's profile image, contain a tiny "StyleGAN 2 (Karras et al.)" watermark in the lower right corner.
It's a great day to look at a network of inauthentic accounts that post identical AI art images (with a side of good old fashioned T-shirt spam).
cc: @ZellaQuixote
This network consists of 24 X accounts. 12 of these accounts were created in the latter half of 2023 and have female avatars, while the other 12 were created in 2013 or earlier and have male avatars.
The 12 accounts with female avatars and 2023 creation dates regularly post AI-generated art images, and these image posts are quickly reposted by other accounts in the network (both female and male). The AI-generated images are often duplicated across accounts.
Meet @ImJamesMiller (permanent ID 1371651462153994242), an account with a GAN-generated face, 172K followers, and no tweets prior to two days ago. What's up with that?
cc: @ZellaQuixote
As it turns out, @ImJamesMiller wasn't always named @ImJamesMiller. In June, the account was named @/IamJimCaviezel in an apparent attempt to impersonate Sound of Freedom actor Jim Caviezel.
@ImJamesMiller Multiple prominent users appear to have accepted the fake Jim Caviezel account as legitimate, including Texas Congressman Brian Babin, right-wing influencer/ex-Game of Thrones blogger Jack Posobiec, and recently indicted ex-Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark.
It's a great day to look at a network of Bluesky spam accounts with randomized names. #SundaySpam
cc: @ZellaQuixote
This spam network consists of (at least) 401 accounts, all of which were created (or added to the Bluesky app view) in August 2023. These accounts do not follow each other; rather, each one follows a small number of popular Bluesky accounts.
The accounts in this network cycle rhythmically between posting three types of content:
• reposts
• posts containing links to news articles
• posts containing links to news articles accompanied by images
Meet @thisisorange, a Twitter account created in February 2022 with a gold "verified organization" badge, thousands of batch-created fake followers, and a couple other interesting traits.
Verified organizations on Twitter can verify affiliated accounts (employees, teams, brand names, etc), which receive blue checkmarks as well as an organization badge (help.twitter.com/en/using-twitt…). The @thisisorange account has thousands of affiliates, mostly cryptocurrency accounts.
How did this come about? The website linked on @thisisorange's profile (orange dot associates) apparently allows one to become an affiliate simply by providing a Twitter account and a cryptocurrency wallet.