In one of the more hilariously meta developments in recent Twitter botting history, retweet-to-win tweets from @SeigRobotics offering free access to some sort of Twitter botting tool are being retweeted by a bunch of bots. #MondayMotivation
We found 321 accounts that used one or more custom automation apps to retweet one or more of @SeigRobotics's recent tweets. We then looked at the retweets of other tweets those accounts had retweeted to find members of the same networks that haven't (yet) retweeted @SeigRobotics.
We found 49 groups of automated accounts (536 accounts total), each using a separate set of custom automation apps. (It's quite possible that there are fewer than 49 distinct botnets, as several of the smaller groups were created on the same day.)
We looked at some of the larger networks. First, we have 29 accounts created over two hours on August 8th 2020, each of which has exactly one tweet: a retweet of @SeigRobotics's most recent tweet, sent via an app called "seig_bot".
Next, we have a group of 97 accounts tweeting via a myriad of apps, most of which have names similar to official Twitter products but with extra spaces in them, i.e. "Twitter for iPhone ". These accounts retweet tweets from a variety of proxy and botting software providers.
Moving on, here's a group of 53 accounts tweeting via apps named "Biyon≡( ε:)" and "Biyon≡( ε:) Pro". Most of these accounts were made back in 2013 and originally amplified Japanese tweets, but some have reawakened and are now boosting English retweet-to-win tweets.
The last retweet-to-win botnet we'll look at for now consists of 46 accounts, and has tweeted via 90 different custom apps in 5 months. All but 3 of these apps have been shut down (the "erasedXXXXXXXX" apps on the legend) - whether by the bot operator(s) or by Twitter is unclear.
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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.