The first account to tweet #WhyRepublicansAreJumpingShip, @Evi1Geniu5, has an interesting behavior pattern: it tweets a given hashtag several times over the course of a few minutes and then never tweets it again. What's going on?
The answer lies in a hashtag game app/network known as @HashtagRoundup. New hashtags are debuted at scheduled times by specified accounts, and users receive a notification so they may participate and attempt to get the hashtag to trend should they so choose.
We downloaded the last week or so's worth of tweets containing @HashtagRoundup hashtags (82 hashtags total, we may have missed a few). Very little of the traffic appears to be automated, but often shows rhythmic spikes due to debuting the hashtags at scheduled times.
The @HashtagRoundup hashtags are generally launched at the top of the hour (sometimes at half past), and frequently trend: 22 of 82 (26.8%) of the hashtags we analyzed trended in at least one of the 24 countries for which we're monitoring trends.
Retweet networks for the 82 @HashtagRoundup hashtags, both with and without today's #WhyRepublicansAreJumpingShip spike. Both charts feature a dense cluster of regular @HashtagRoundup users alongside one or more looser clusters of political accounts.
We of course were unable to resist having @DrunkAlexJones participate in several @HashtagRoundup hashtags. A few of them got retweeted by the accounts that launched the hashtags in question.
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It's New Year's Eve, and a bunch of politics enthusiasts with GAN-generated faces are enthusiastically replying to a variety of posts with similarly-worded replies. #NewYearShenaniGANs
cc: @ZellaQuixote
The politics enthusiasts are part of a spam network consisting of (at least) 575 accounts created between May and December 2023 with GAN-generated faces. Many of their handles, such as @Maairiuieinaaa and @eJooeiaAoneueer, contain long strings of vowels.
@Maairiuieinaaa @eJooeiaAoneueer All 575 of these accounts use StyleGAN-generated faces as profile images. Some of these, such as @MauMoiagaia's profile image, contain a tiny "StyleGAN 2 (Karras et al.)" watermark in the lower right corner.
It's a great day to look at a network of inauthentic accounts that post identical AI art images (with a side of good old fashioned T-shirt spam).
cc: @ZellaQuixote
This network consists of 24 X accounts. 12 of these accounts were created in the latter half of 2023 and have female avatars, while the other 12 were created in 2013 or earlier and have male avatars.
The 12 accounts with female avatars and 2023 creation dates regularly post AI-generated art images, and these image posts are quickly reposted by other accounts in the network (both female and male). The AI-generated images are often duplicated across accounts.
Meet @ImJamesMiller (permanent ID 1371651462153994242), an account with a GAN-generated face, 172K followers, and no tweets prior to two days ago. What's up with that?
cc: @ZellaQuixote
As it turns out, @ImJamesMiller wasn't always named @ImJamesMiller. In June, the account was named @/IamJimCaviezel in an apparent attempt to impersonate Sound of Freedom actor Jim Caviezel.
@ImJamesMiller Multiple prominent users appear to have accepted the fake Jim Caviezel account as legitimate, including Texas Congressman Brian Babin, right-wing influencer/ex-Game of Thrones blogger Jack Posobiec, and recently indicted ex-Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark.
It's a great day to look at a network of Bluesky spam accounts with randomized names. #SundaySpam
cc: @ZellaQuixote
This spam network consists of (at least) 401 accounts, all of which were created (or added to the Bluesky app view) in August 2023. These accounts do not follow each other; rather, each one follows a small number of popular Bluesky accounts.
The accounts in this network cycle rhythmically between posting three types of content:
• reposts
• posts containing links to news articles
• posts containing links to news articles accompanied by images
Meet @thisisorange, a Twitter account created in February 2022 with a gold "verified organization" badge, thousands of batch-created fake followers, and a couple other interesting traits.
Verified organizations on Twitter can verify affiliated accounts (employees, teams, brand names, etc), which receive blue checkmarks as well as an organization badge (help.twitter.com/en/using-twitt…). The @thisisorange account has thousands of affiliates, mostly cryptocurrency accounts.
How did this come about? The website linked on @thisisorange's profile (orange dot associates) apparently allows one to become an affiliate simply by providing a Twitter account and a cryptocurrency wallet.