We took a snapshot of 24 hours worth of English tweets (excluding retweets) containing coronavirus/#coronavirus. A significant fraction of the traffic is automated - 65347 of 360035 tweets (18.2%). 7544 accounts posted multiple automated tweets.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
@ZellaQuixote Despite the large number of automated coronavirus tweets, we didn't see evidence of large scale botnets; the automated accounts appear to be mostly solo acts. We did find 64 automated accounts that appear to have dedicated themselves to tweeting about coronavirus, though.
@ZellaQuixote These 64 bots (once again, we don't have evidence that they're a single network, but our metrics ain't perfect and absence of evidence ain't evidence of absence) link a variety of websites. Some of the more interesting ones: Amazon (more on that later), Epoch Times, and Reddit.
@ZellaQuixote Next, we looked at frequent fliers - accounts that tweeted about coronavirus at least 100 times during our 24 hour snapshot. 29 of 39 (74.4%) are automated; most of these are news aggregation bots of varying degrees of quality but a couple are more interesting. . .
@ZellaQuixote First up, we have automated #resistance account @Tomthunkitsmind. This is the only one of the 39 coronavirus frequent fliers that is spreading disinformation on the topic, with repeated tweets claiming that the virus was "DESIGNED" (103 tweets so far.)
@ZellaQuixote @TomthunkitsMind Next, we have @AGNCanada, an automated account with a habit of sharing Epoch Times articles (both the English and Chinese versions of the site) about coronavirus alongside links to products on Amazon that seem very unlikely to be of much use in combating coronavirus.
@ZellaQuixote @TomthunkitsMind @AGNCanada Epoch times isn't the only shady news source @AGNCanada links - gnews(dot)org is new to us but is apparently affiliated with Steve Bannon.
mediabiasfactcheck.com/gnews/
mediabiasfactcheck.com/gnews/
@ZellaQuixote @TomthunkitsMind @AGNCanada Finally we looked at new accounts that tweeted more than once (excluding retweets) about coronavirus during the 24 hours we captured. We found 2015 accounts created January 1st, 2020 or later; judging by profile hashtags, they mostly lean right politically.
@ZellaQuixote @TomthunkitsMind @AGNCanada A repeated theme among newly created accounts that tweet about coronavirus: dedication to promoting obscure websites, many of which sell things or solicit donations). We found 131 such accounts that had linked their affiliated website at least 50 times.
@ZellaQuixote @TomthunkitsMind @AGNCanada Addendum: in addition to having posted over a hundred coronavirus conspiracy theory tweets, @TomthunkitsMind has a link to a free e-book on coronavirus in its pinned tweet. The "book" repeats the claim that the virus was created in a lab at least 4 times.
We also noticed that @TomthunkitsMind was (and still is) promoting the now-suspended @livecrisisnews account, which had recently pivoted from reporting on fake emergencies and spreading disinformation about mass shootings to coronavirus spam.
Oh, anti-vax "news" site Natural News turns up in @Tomthunkitsmind's #coronavirus tweets too. (Probably NOT an ideal source for information on viruses, just saying. . .)
Another recent addition to automated #resistance account @TomthunkitsMind's lineup: an article from far-right propaganda site Epoch Times claiming that the #coronavirus was likely genetically engineered.
