Thread by @conspirator0

We looked at automation in tweets linking seven news sites that get between 40K and 200K tweets per week. Sites included:

The Daily Caller
Huffington Post
Sputnik
The Epoch Times (English)
The Intercept
The Nation
ZeroHedge

cc: @ZellaQuixote

@ZellaQuixote Twitter traffic linking most of the news sites is roughly 3-5% automated, based on software used. Outliers are Sputnik at 13.4% and Daily Caller at 1.4%.

@ZellaQuixote Overall volume for the three right-wing sites. ZeroHedge is unique among all 7 sites in that the official account (@zerohedge) uses a custom app ("Zero Hedge Publisher II", apparently a sequel) as opposed to a service such as Buffer (used by both @DailyCaller and @EpochTimes.)

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes Next, the left-wing sites. Huffington Post has a higher percentage of automation than the others, but not all of it is bots; 231 largely organic accounts linked the HuffPo website 689 times using an app called SmartNews, which shares news stories of your choice on social media.

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes Finally, we have Sputnik, which is both the most automated of the lot and the only one of the seven sites where peak traffic times do not align with the US day/night cycle due to a large Turkish and French presence.

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes Not all of the bots that link these news sites confine themselves to a single site. Here are the ones that link four or more, some of which we've seen before: #MAGA frequent flier @ImmoralReport, @OccuWorld (a high volume general newsbot), and #GiletsJaunes bot @DuPouvoirDachat.

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat Lurking in the depths of recent ZeroHedge traffic we find @WallStScott, @TraderSeanH, @MarketsHill, and @TraderPBurns, a quartet of largely financially-focused retweets bots with app names that are uncannily similar to official Twitter products, i.e. "Twitter Web Client (T1)".

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns Next up, we have @DailyLafayette, an incredibly repetitive IFTTT bot that wakes up once a day to issue a flurry of tweets linking ZeroHedge accompanied by the #honkhonk hashtag (a possible reference to the white supremacist "honkler" meme.)

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns @DailyLafayette Onward to Daily Caller, to which we found 6 accounts (@EINClintonNews, @EINObamaNews, @EINUSPolitics, @EINEducation, @EINIntlTrade, and @EINTeaPartyNews) tweeting links via "EIN News Publisher". These accounts are part of a network of 103 themed newbots using the same software.

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns @DailyLafayette @EINClintonNews @EINObamaNews @EINUSPolitics @EINEducation @EINIntlTrade @EINTeaPartyNews Update: three of the automated accounts pushing ZeroHedge links were suspended today. One was the official account; the others were #GiletsJaunes retweet bots @4Tchat and @DuPouvoirDachat, which appear to have broadened their interests to include #coronovirus of late.

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns @DailyLafayette @EINClintonNews @EINObamaNews @EINUSPolitics @EINEducation @EINIntlTrade @EINTeaPartyNews @4Tchat * #coronavirus

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns @DailyLafayette @EINClintonNews @EINObamaNews @EINUSPolitics @EINEducation @EINIntlTrade @EINTeaPartyNews @4Tchat The two now-suspended #GiletsJaunes retweet bots (@4Tchat and @DuPouvoirDachat) also retweeted tweets linking Epoch Times, as did a #QAnon bot we recently ran across, @___WWG1WGA___.

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1219476629841416192?s=20

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns @DailyLafayette @EINClintonNews @EINObamaNews @EINUSPolitics @EINEducation @EINIntlTrade @EINTeaPartyNews @4Tchat @___WWG1WGA___ Among the accounts linking Huffington Post we found two interesting high-volume bots: @trumpretweeter, which retweets tweets containing the word "trump", and #resistance bot @TomthunkitsMind, described in this earlier thread.

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1191176089885925378?s=20

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns @DailyLafayette @EINClintonNews @EINObamaNews @EINUSPolitics @EINEducation @EINIntlTrade @EINTeaPartyNews @4Tchat @___WWG1WGA___ @trumpretweeter @TomthunkitsMind Finally, Sputnik News has the distinction of being the only media outlet in the set we looked at with bots linking in a variety of languages to any significant degree. Most common are Japanese, English, French, and Spanish.

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns @DailyLafayette @EINClintonNews @EINObamaNews @EINUSPolitics @EINEducation @EINIntlTrade @EINTeaPartyNews @4Tchat @___WWG1WGA___ @trumpretweeter @TomthunkitsMind Update: four day old bot @zeroedtweets may well be "not affiliated to zerohedge" as its profile claims, but it sure is fond of linking ZeroHedge in its tweets.

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns @DailyLafayette @EINClintonNews @EINObamaNews @EINUSPolitics @EINEducation @EINIntlTrade @EINTeaPartyNews @4Tchat @___WWG1WGA___ @trumpretweeter @TomthunkitsMind @zeroedtweets Is @RssZero yet another brand new ZeroHedge bot? You betcha! #TuesdayThoughts

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns @DailyLafayette @EINClintonNews @EINObamaNews @EINUSPolitics @EINEducation @EINIntlTrade @EINTeaPartyNews @4Tchat @___WWG1WGA___ @trumpretweeter @TomthunkitsMind @zeroedtweets @RssZero We've been keeping an eye on automated Twitter traffic linking ZeroHedge since @zerohedge's suspension. The percentage of tweets sent by automated means has doubled in the time since the ban, from 3.6% to 7.3%, and a couple of the newcomers are interesting. . .

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns @DailyLafayette @EINClintonNews @EINObamaNews @EINUSPolitics @EINEducation @EINIntlTrade @EINTeaPartyNews @4Tchat @___WWG1WGA___ @trumpretweeter @TomthunkitsMind @zeroedtweets @RssZero Two older accounts, @zerohedgge (created 2018) and @ZH_Headline_Bot (created 2011) have been repurposed as ZeroHedge bots within the last two weeks. @zerohedgge was previously less automated and named @JDevalo; we were unable to track down @ZH_Headline_Bot's previous name.

@ZellaQuixote @zerohedge @DailyCaller @EpochTimes @ImmoralReport @OccuWorld @DuPouvoirDachat @WallStScott @TraderSeanH @MarketsHill @TraderPBurns @DailyLafayette @EINClintonNews @EINObamaNews @EINUSPolitics @EINEducation @EINIntlTrade @EINTeaPartyNews @4Tchat @___WWG1WGA___ @trumpretweeter @TomthunkitsMind @zeroedtweets @RssZero @zerohedgge @ZH_Headline_Bot This now puts us at (at least) four new or repurposed automated accounts pushing ZeroHedge links subsequent to (and quite possibly in reaction to) the suspension of the official @zerohedge account.