As seems to be something of a theme with Twitter accounts being resold on the gray market, @cripplebud (permanent ID 1850835966) has several thousand early followers that were mostly created in batches and are likely fake.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
By exploring the follower networks of @cripplebud's fake followers, we found 15603 accounts that we believe to be part of an old fake follower network. Most were created in February 2014 and have Cyrillic display names. None have liked more than 7 tweets.
This network is largely dormant now, but was quite active in 2014 and early 2015, tweeting via a variety of apps (2206 total). Content is in a variety of languages, with Russian being the most common, followed by English, French, and Ukrainian.
The original tweets produced by this botnet are highly repetitive, with tweets offering followers for sale and tweets promoting porn as common themes. (If any of the linked sites are still up, we recommend not clicking the links.)
Back when it was active, this botnet retweeted a variety of accounts, mostly Russian-language. Among them is @ARTEM_KLYUSHIN, whose account seems to be a perennial favorite of fake engagement networks.
The accounts followed by this network appear to be mostly promotional in nature. Some of them, such as @YLFLY_France, also have followers from other fake engagement networks we've crossed paths with.
(more on the reselling of Twitter accounts)
