Thread by @Shayan86

#ExposeBillGates is the number 1 trend in the US right now. The hashtag has been slowly gathering momentum since last week but there's been a notable spike in traffic in the last 24 hrs with almost 30,000 tweets with the hashtag (retweets included). Let's take a closer look

If you exclude the retweets, the numbers take a huge dip. Some 7,000 original tweets by 3,300 unique accounts in the last couple of days. Turn the retweet tap back on and you've got 15,700 unique accounts. So let's keep things in perspective, this is a small crowd

83% of the traffic is driven by retweets. Focus on the other common words/phrases appearing in the hashtag and you go down a rabbit hole. "Sex offenders", "guinea pigs", "gene therapy", "arrestbillgates". And of course WWG1WGA and QAnon are there too. They have to be

As expected, most of the traffic is in the US. I'm surprised the UK is only 4th, behind Spain and Denmark. That's a new one to me. Also surprised not to see Brazil in there somewhere. State-wise, New York and California are way ahead of the rest

Let's look at the biggest tweets. Right-wing commentator @michellemalkin and conservative activist @DeAnna4Congress - who ran against Nancy Pelosi in a March primary and got 1.8% of the vote - are the best-known accounts tweeting the hashtag

All sorts of conspiracy theories about Mr Gates and vaccines can be found here. Vaccines are "gene therapy for human guinea pigs". Bill Gates wants to "enslave" humans "with vaccines and electronic ID implants". The Gates Foundation controls agriculture via "Golden Rice Project"

The memes are even more conspiratorial. According to the anti-vaxx community, Mr Gates literally runs the world. There's also quite a lot of interest in getting him arrested, much like the constant calls we've seen by some on the right to "arrest George Soros"

Some of the active accounts have changed their profile photos to a meme that was specifically created to organise for this "day of action". The coronavirus pandemic has made Bill Gates one of the biggest bogeymen around for the conspiracy theorists among us

What about Facebook and Instagram? According to @crowdtangle there have been just over 2,000 posts with 81,000 interactions on public Facebook groups/pages with #ExposeBillGates in the last 24hrs. On Instagram, there have been 61 posts with 34,000 interactions

The same "day of action" poster can be found on Instagram/Facebook. Spanish rockstar @bunburyoficial shared it, which is probably why the hashtag is popular in Spain. One of the big QAnon Facebook pages with 151,000 followers is also involved

Of course, the "Collective Action Against Bill Gates" Facebook group is also heavily involved. Online events planned and all that. "We encourage everyone to share accurate and credible information about Gates' goals." Very accurate information is being shared indeed...

We've written about the massive rise of Bill Gates conspiracy theories during the Covid-19 pandemic over and over again. His vaccines in Africa and Asia, depopulation, microchips planted into people, links with "deep state", etc. This piece is a good read bbc.co.uk/news/technolog…