Thread by @conspirator0

Are these spambots? Survey says yes! #SaturdaySpam

cc: @ZellaQuixote

We found a network of 20 automated accounts, all spamming Korean hashtags with an embedded phone number via twittbot(dot)net. All but two were created in 2019, with the network first tweeting in August 2019 and slowly scaling up output.

These accounts are incredibly repetitive, with each account having a specific tweet that it tweets over and over, varying only the final portion consisting of random-looking letters and numbers. Tables of @q33soc and @vbvaldo's repeated tweets are provided as examples.

These bots mostly tweet Korean hashtags, but intermingled are follower growth hashtags like #followback, #follwback, and #rt. (We don't speak Korean and these translations are poor, but based on some poking around the services being promoting by the botnet are somewhat NSFW.)