Thread by @marcowenjones

[Thread] Tonight's episode of Tales from a Digital Dystopia is called 'Dead Man Talking'. It's a story of intrigue, deception, and manipulation. But it's also one, where you, the public, can shape the ending. In fact, I need your help, and so might our friend, who we'll call Dave

the year is 2019, i.e. this year. Corporations are increasingly unaccountable, especially big tech and Silicon Valley. Our data is being sold to various entities with nefarious agendas. Cambridge Analytica, well they were dumb enough to get caught. What about the smarter ones?

This is where David comes in, not because he worked for such a corporation or institution, but because he was, in many ways, a victim of one. Not that he knew of course, or would ever know...It's too late for that, because David is already dead.

I don't know if David liked Cat Stevens, or Yusuf Islam, but when I see this photo of him, I think of the song 'Oh Very Young'. To me it embodies an innocence and optimism that makes me think the best in everyone. In fact, why not listen to it now

David Schwartz passed away in 2016. He was a much loved weatherman on The Weather Channel. Indeed, he was well-known enough to have an obituary in the New York Times. That is quite an honor, and a fitting tribute to someone who had fought cancer... nytimes.com/2016/08/01/bus…

Yet while David sadly is no longer with us, a digital trace of him remains. His verified Twitter account still lives on. Gone is his photo with the friendly smile. All that remains are the cold, grey pixels of a once warm Twitter page... twitter.com/twcdaveschwartz

oh, and the blue verified Twitter badge...

Hang on? Why is the account of a man who passed away some time ago still verified? What's more, why does he have a bunch of followers, many of which seem to be connected to Saudi Arabia...?

Well, if we go back through the dark tunnels of Twitter history, we begin to find some answers. Fans of David reported that his account had been hacked back in 2018 - twice. Both times, it started tweeting in Arabic...

When I spoke to some of his friends and fans, they had mentioned that they had reported the case, or attempted to report it to Twitter. Nothing appeared to have happened. Instead, the account seemed to be active. Indeed, it pulled an Angus and blocked people who challenged it...

It then changed into an account with the Arabic name فعاليات القصيم , which translates as ‘Al Qassim Events'. Al Qassim is a region in Saudi. (Apparently they have events). It wasn't clear who hijacked the account. Some rumours were that it was a Saudi Prince...

But David wasn't the only one. When I was doing a textbook Twitter trawl, I stumbled on another hashtag in Arabic where a Saudi account promoting propaganda about Saudi's murderous crown Prince MBS was tweeting from a verified account with the handle @SheynaSteiner (see right)

@SheynaSteiner Some of you may have realised that it is probably unusual for a Saudi called Abdul Aziz to also have the Twitter handle Sheyna Steiner...Indeed, with this strange coincidence of two hacked verified accounts tweeting Saudi propaganda, I sleuthed some more...

@SheynaSteiner I downloaded about 330,000 verified Twitter accounts in order to poke around. I zoned in on David's Accounts and Sheyna's, just to see if there was anything unusual in the metadata. And there was...

@SheynaSteiner Just a quick tea break on the advice of @MKalousian
- while I wait for my data to load of course...

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian Stupid loading times...

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian Ok, tea brewed. What I found surprised me. I found that both suspicious account exhibited similar patterns: Shortened links in the metadata. I filtered all the rows to find out more of these links....Maybe other accounts with similar anomalies would also be compromised...

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian All the twitter accounts have a field for 'profile picture URL' - which is self explanatory. However, I noticed that both dodgy accounts had //abs. instead //pbs in the URL field. I also noticed that their language was in Arabic. So I filtered some more...

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian I figured I could look at these accounts in more detail. Indeed, who were they. Well, a whose who of mid to low-level but probably much-loved celebs. Chris Fedun from the show Nashville, Nicole Jade Parks - an Olympian...None of them sounded Arabic though. So I looked further

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian Sure enough, Nicole Jade Parks had obviously had her account hacked. Her profile picture was good, and she was also being followed by - you guessed it - similar random Saudi accounts. Not the typical following habits of an Australian freestyle skier...

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian Sure enough, I found around 9-10 verified Twitter accounts that had been hacked in similar way. There was no evidence to suggest all of them spread pro-Saudi regime propaganda, but at least three of them had. Below are the accounts, some are still verified twitter.com/nicolejadeparks

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian Similarly, another trawl through Twitter revealed that numerous people were having their Twitter accounts hijacked, often to spread pro Saudi government messages - this included Jeff Emmerson and TANNER CHIDESTER (the name demands caps). @Tanner_Fitness

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness Indeed, the below example shows a concerned friend of Tanner's informing that he had tweeted a picture of someone milking a donkey. The tweet in question reads '"Hey donkeys it's a boycott not a blockade". It was aimed at people criticizing Saudi's erm, blockott of Qatar

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness Some may have panicked, but not TANNER CHIDESTER. On the contrary, he had grown used to being Twitter-hacked and developed a somewhat lighthearted response to it (see image). #WeAreAllTannerChidester

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness TANNER drama aside, it was highly alarming to see that verified Twitter accounts were being hacked. Not only that, they were being hacked to spread propaganda on behalf of a regime that likely butchered a journalist on foreign soil. #JamalKhashoggi

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness Was this an anomaly, or was this a reflection of the fact that Saudi influence on Twitter is considerable? Should we see this as a coincidence. We already know there has been a Saudi mole kicked out of Twitter HQ in San Francisco. nytimes.com/2018/10/20/us/…

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness We know that a Saudi Prince was the second largest single stakeholder in Twitter in 2015, with an even bigger share than Jack Dorsey, the CEO. bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/artic…

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness We also know high-level advisors like @saudq1978 , who allegedly oversaw the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It was also revealed he sought tools that would attempt to have Twitter accounts suspended bellingcat.com/wp-content/upl…

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness @saudq1978 So the question remains? Were these accounts hijacked or bought as part of some personal vanity projects, or were they indeed hijacked in order to purposefully spread propaganda? More to the point, the big question is this...

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness @saudq1978 Why has @TwitterSupport not removed the verification status of these accounts, especially David's. He has been dead over two years - had the ignominy of tweeting propaganda beyond the grave, and yet his account still remains verified, with a slew of unusual followers!?

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness @saudq1978 @TwitterSupport This, dear Twitterverse, is where you come in. This is how we can achieve closure. Maybe some of you do not care about the still verified account, I know a number of people find it incredibly disrespectful. However, if we make enough noise, maybe Twitter will act.

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness @saudq1978 @TwitterSupport Afterall, the popularity of the Angus thread got him suspended....

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness @saudq1978 @TwitterSupport So dear @Twitter, can you please de-verify or clean up the hacked account of a man who has been dead for three years, and even has an obituary in the New York Times. Unless, of course - you can't....

@SheynaSteiner @MKalousian @Tanner_Fitness @saudq1978 @TwitterSupport @Twitter - Fin-

Thanks again for listening good people of Twitter, and bots!