Just how viral is clickbait site just-viral-news(dot)com on Twitter? Also, are there bots involved? (Spoiler: yes.)
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
@ZellaQuixote At first glance, just-viral-news(dot)com looks amazingly popular, with 299252 tweets in 10 days. Looking more closely, though, those tweets came from just 961 accounts, and almost all the original tweets (non-retweets) were posted via TweetDeck by a group of 39 accounts.
@ZellaQuixote These 39 bots operate in lockstep, tweeting the same content on nearly identical schedules. They were created in multiple batches of 3 to 5 accounts over the past two years, and periodically switch up which clickbait site they’re promoting.
@ZellaQuixote The sites being linked by this botnet share content with the accounts described in thread (also clickbait bots, although some of the specific behaviors differ.)
@ZellaQuixote Retweet network for just-viral-news(dot)com. Only the 39 TweetDeck bots received significant retweet volume, each of which seems to have its own distinct set of amplifier accounts (perimeter of network) along with a set that amplify all of them (center of network.)
@ZellaQuixote Although the amplifier accounts appear organic based on software used, the activity looks potentially coordinated - the clickbait site just-viral-news(dot)com is their mostly frequently linked website, and the network tweets 24/7.
