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We went looking for automated accounts linking the official campaign sites of the various 2020 candidates, and ended up hailing a taxi - several of them, in fact. In an amazing plot twist, @BluemontTaxi, @CulpeperTaxiCab, @FlyToDulles, and @LoudounCab are bots.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
@BluemontTaxi @CulpeperTaxiCab @FlyToDulles @LoudounCab @ZellaQuixote We've seen this network (or at least portions of it) before - at the beginning of September we found 32 taxi/realtor bots tweeting a variety of 2020 Democratic candidate hashtags as well as #MoscowMitch, and more recently we found 5 more mostly pushing Warren-related hashtags.
@BluemontTaxi @CulpeperTaxiCab @FlyToDulles @LoudounCab @ZellaQuixote (links to previous threads discussing the taxicab botnet)
@BluemontTaxi @CulpeperTaxiCab @FlyToDulles @LoudounCab @ZellaQuixote By searching for additional accounts linking to the same taxi-related websites as the one we'd already found, we were able to expand the set of taxi/realtor bots to 54. There are likely more, and we would not be surprised to see some of them surface in the coming days.
@BluemontTaxi @CulpeperTaxiCab @FlyToDulles @LoudounCab @ZellaQuixote We've been peeking in on the taxibots periodically, and have snapshots of the state of their tweets from 11 separate dates between 8/30 and 10/5. Curiously, the total number of tweets drops sharply toward the end of September, potentially indicating deleted tweets. . .
@BluemontTaxi @CulpeperTaxiCab @FlyToDulles @LoudounCab @ZellaQuixote The taxibots have in fact prolifically deleted tweets - of 257440 tweets we've captured from the 54 accounts, 179531 have been deleted, mostly from the period in early September when the accounts were engaged in high-volume political spam.
@BluemontTaxi @CulpeperTaxiCab @FlyToDulles @LoudounCab @ZellaQuixote Non-animated version of the botnet's tweet schedule both with and without the deleted tweets included. Alongside the deletion, the accounts have slowed their pace and decreased the overall percentage of political tweets in general (at least for now.)
@BluemontTaxi @CulpeperTaxiCab @FlyToDulles @LoudounCab @ZellaQuixote Finally, here's a comparison of the content of the #taxibots' non-political and political tweets. The non-political ones are mostly focused on taxis and real estate, while the political ones feature a mix of candidate names and popular left-wing hashtags.
@BluemontTaxi @CulpeperTaxiCab @FlyToDulles @LoudounCab @ZellaQuixote Update: we broadened our search to include all the theoretically commercial websites linked by this set of bots (in addition to taxis, real estate and photography are recurring themes.)
@BluemontTaxi @CulpeperTaxiCab @FlyToDulles @LoudounCab @ZellaQuixote We found 44 additional bots, bringing the total to 98. Of those, 61 have thus far tweeted or retweeted political content of some type (either links to candidate websites, usually Warren, Sanders, or O'Rourke, or political hashtags such as #MoscowMitch.)
