#HydroxychloroquineWorks started trending in the USA yesterday (July 27, 2020) at ~ 8:30 PM PDT. The likely cause: @realDonaldTrump retweeted a two-day old tweet containing the hashtag from an account with the catchy name of @biobiobiobior 11 minutes earlier.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
The @biobiobiobior account was created in 2009, but has almost no tweets prior to March 2020, changed names at least once, and quite possibly deleted older tweets. Most content is in French (the tweet Trump retweeted is an exception).
Although some folks are night owls and any Twitter user could be physically located anywhere, @biobiobiobior's schedule looks more normal for France (and a some other places in Europe/Africa) than North America, which mirrors the account's language use.
What does the recently-awakened @biobiobiobior tweet about? Hydroxychoroquine, hydroxychloroquine, and more hydroxychloroquine, mostly. It has tweeted two different articles promoting hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment over 100 times each.
The accounts that follow @biobiobiobior are disproportionately recent creations, with 826 of its 3019 followers (26.6%) created 1/1/2020 or later. @biobiobiobior's 21st follower was created in 2020, which means all but 20 of its current followers followed it this year.
One more comment on @biobiobiobior's followers: among its early followers are a quartet of right-wing French retweet bots we analyzed back in April 2020.
Footnote: this massively viral tweet is false. #HydroxychloroquineWorks began trending at 8:30 PM, not 1 AM, and the posts are spread across 12+ hours, not all at the same time.
