[Thread] Check this out #disinformation fans!!! What do Former Arizona Diamondbacks Pitcher Joey Krehbiel and Indiana-based singer-songwriter Aaron Persinger have in common? Sure they're both American, they both have verified accounts, but that's not all.... 
2/ I'd never heard of the two of them before, until yesterday, when I stumbled across both accounts taking an interest in a disinformation campaign seemingly emanating from Saudi Arabia. Cool I thought, some Americans taken an interesting in Gulf politics... #disinformation
3/ Kidding, it was totally uncool. Both accounts were spreading disinformation and Saudi propaganda. They have been hacked/appropriated!! Aaron Persinger is no longer crooning, but has become 'Mustafa', a pro MBS account and Saudi media figure #disinformation
4/ Baseball fans will be disappointed that Joey Krehbiel has stop pitching balls, and is now pitching fake news [ewww sorry about that]. His new name is "Ahmed Alwakeel", and he is an Egyptian who loves his country. He has also been tweeting about a fake coup in Qatar #disinfo
5/ We know who these accounts belonged to. Both Joey's account @JoeyKrehbiel (aka Ahmed) and @aaronpersinger (aka Mustafa) have records on the Wayback Machine (see screenshots). Joey's wayback record is from January 2020, meaning his account was hacked and/or sold recently!
6/ The accounts were very active yesterday spreading fake news about there being an attempted coup in Qatar and that the former PM @hamadjjalthani had been killed. As you can see from the below screengrab. (I've archived many of their tweets for reference). #disinformation
7/ This is not the first time this has happened. I identified the same last year when the account of dead American weatherman @twcdaveschwartz [wow this account was only recently suspended] and other verified accounts were spreading Saudi propaganda english.alaraby.co.uk/english/indept…
8/ It also happened to Norwegian skiier @Kjansrud See this thread for further details on that case.
#disinformation
#disinformation
9/ So it's interesting to see that this recent uptick in disinformation from (what appears to be) Saudi has been accompanied by sockpuppet networks, doctored videos, fake news, hacked verified accounts and trolls. One has to wonder if Saud Al Qahtani is back... #disinformation
10/ That's all for now, but please share. It's disinformation in it's own right but further highlights that Twitter's verified system is problematic. Hard to say if these are intelligence accounts, private actors who want the status of verified, or something else.Given the nature
11/ of the content it would seem probable that whoever is responsible for information ops in Saudi has sought to obtain these accounts - hard to see why else they'd be tweeting so hard to promote fake news. #disinformation
13/ Whoa! South Africa-based Journalist @SesantSiyabonga has had his verified account hacked by someone whose user reported location is in Al Ain. Sesant states that he reported his account was hacked on 17th April but still nothing has happened! via @_FALCON_01
14/ So almost a month has gone between the verified account being hacked and an ostensibly UAE-based account overtaking it and tweeting (bizarrely) on Gulf politics... Understandably, Sesant is freaking out.
15/ Another update, a verified account of a former Australian journalist @MarizaOKeefe was reportedly to have been also taken over in April by someone who spoke Arabic, apparently threatening gay people in Saudi, via @dndnma > See here>
