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While looking into something mostly unrelated, we encountered a group of accounts making a rather forward emoji-and-large-number laden offer. Should we allow this network to blow our accounts?
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
@ZellaQuixote We searched for original tweets (i.e. not retweets) containing the phrase "allow me to blow your account" accompanied by emoji and multiple numbers. We found 216 accounts that posted tweets of this kind in the last ten days.
@ZellaQuixote Unlike many of the networks we've studied, these accounts weren't created in batches - they've popped up slowly over the past nine and a half years. The majority (151 of 216, or 70%) theoretically tweet via the Twitter Android app (which doesn't rule out automation.)
@ZellaQuixote The accounts definitely form a network - 172 of the 216 accounts retweet each other's "allow me to blow your account" tweets, and many of the accounts retweet several dozen of the others (hence the dense and difficult-to-read center cluster in the figure.)
