Thread by @conspirator0

Right-wing groups have been organizing protests against the stay-at-home/quarantine orders put into place by various states to combat the spread of the novel #coronavirus. We took a look at the hashtags promoting these events. #AltWankers #Covidiocy

cc: @ZellaQuixote

We downloaded a week's worth of tweets containing all permutations of #Open, #OpenUp, #Reopen, #Liberate, or #Free followed by a state name (250 hashtags total), yielding 55095 tweets from 34787 accounts. #FreeMichigan was first to achieve significant volume, on April 15th.

Which states do hashtag-happy Twitter accounts want reopened so that citizens may exercise their hypothetical right to contract and spread #COVID19 unhindered? Texas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia were the most frequently hashtagged.

The accounts tweeting the various state-specific anti-quarantine hashtags have similar preferences in news sources. Two right-wing websites, Breitbart and Gateway Pundit, are the most frequently linked media sites by a substantial margin.

Retweet network for the anti-quarantine hashtags. The main cluster consists of right-wing accounts, including Michigan Trump campaign co-chair @meshawnmaria and Michael Flynn's attorney @SidneyPowell1, both of whom tweeted hashtags in favor of "opening" six different states.

Although we saw little way of automated accounts or new accounts promoting the anti-quarantine hashtags, a few do turn up among the frequent fliers. Of particular interest is high-volume #MAGA retweet bot @ImmoralReport, which we've encountered before. . .

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1090787647180718080?s=20

We saw overlap between the accounts using anti-quarantine hashtags and other disinfo activity, past and present. First, 3117 of the 23009 accounts that existed in June 2017 (13.5%) followed at least one of the banned Internet Research Agency whose follower lists we captured.

Second, a significant minority of the accounts tweeting anti-quarantine hashtags have also tweeted anti-vaccine content. 2013 of 24538 accounts with at least 1000 tweets (8.2%) have tweeted anti-vax content at least thrice in their last 1000 tweets (& we're likely undercounting.)

Final clarification: we are not making the claim that either the anti-vax "movement" or Russian trolls "caused" the anti-quarantine protests or associated hashtags; we're pointing out that the folks using the hashtags were likely affected by multiple disinformation vectors.