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What's up with these accounts with January 2020 creation dates all having the same pinned tweet promoting the Brave web browser? Also, are they bots? (Spoiler: Yes.) #BravelyAutomated #WednesdayWisdom

cc: @ZellaQuixote
We found a small botnet consisting of 7 accounts created in the span of 18 seconds on January 27th, 2020, with pinned tweets containing download links for the Brave web browser. Other than the Brave tweets, these accounts are entirely automated, via dlvr(dot)it.
The majority of this botnet's tweets consist of links to various news sites, with travel and local news being recurring themes. The only non-news site linked is brave(dot)com, home of the Brave web browser.
Why did someone bother setting up this botnet? One possible motive is financial; Brave's developers have created their own cryptocurrency (BAT, short for "Basic Attention Token"), which Brave appears to be using to reward existing users for recruiting new ones.
We went looking for additional bots tweeting paid affiliate links promoting the Brave web browser, and found 186 accounts that we believe to be automated based on software used to tweet and/or 24/7 activity.
Among those 186 accounts are 50 batch-created accounts automated via dlvr(dot)it, including the seven we originally posted about. We only looked at accounts that pinned the tweet promoting the Brave web browser in our initial analysis, and thus missed most of the botnet.
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#BravelyAutomated #WednesdayWisdom

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Conspirador Norteño
@conspirator0
Good Day!!!! What's up with all these sugar daddy accounts with the exact same amount of money in the bank, anyway? #TuesdayThoughts

cc: @ZellaQuixote
We searched for tweets containing "I'm a sugar daddy" posted within the last 10 days, and filtered the results to tweets that had been posted verbatim by at least 9 accounts.
We wound up with a group of 76 sugar daddy accounts. All are low-volume, almost all have photographs of white dudes as profile pics, and almost all are recent creations; only 12 were created prior to 2020.
Read 6 tweets
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Conspirador Norteño
@conspirator0
Microsoft founder Bill Gates has been a hot topic of late among #coronavirus conspiracy theorists, many of whom seem eager to blame anyone and everyone other than the present occupant of the White House for the crisis.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
We downloaded recent tweets containing "Bill Gates" or #BillGates, yielding a massive 1144642 tweets from 411882 accounts in eight days. Automation does not appear to be a major factor. Based on the hashtags in their profiles, the tweeters are pretty much all #MAGA accounts.
The Bill Gates coronavirus conspiracies involve multiple overlapping narratives:

• Gates planned the outbreak in advance and simulated it
• Gates patented the SARS-CoV-2 virus
• Gates is planning "depopulation"
• Gates is planning to implant tracking devices in everyone
Read 7 tweets
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Conspirador Norteño
@conspirator0
What's up with all these IFTTT bots quoting Charlotte Brontë (and others)? #SaturdaySpam

cc: @ZellaQuixote
We found a botnet consisting of 21 accounts automated via IFTTT, all created on July 2nd, 2016, all with similar (and likely computer-generated) biographies, female profile pics, and links to one of two websites on their profiles.
This botnet draws its tweets from a repertoire of 1728 famous quotes, each tweeted at least once by every account in the network. We suspect the quotes aren't what these bots were deployed to promote, however. . .
Read 5 tweets

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