We contacted the "24/7 email address" on twitterfollowersbuy(dot)com's "About Us" page, and quickly received a response providing @alkalineph20 as an example of an account followed by the followers offered by the site. Almost all of its followers were created July 2020 or later.
To find more accounts that are likely part of this fake follower network, we downloaded followers of other accounts followed by @alkalineph20's followers, and checked for periods where most of the accounts' followers were created July 2020 or later (orange circled areas).
We found 7461 accounts that we believe to be part of this fake follower network, many made in bulk on July 30th 2020, with the remainder being created later. These accounts have posted few or no tweets, and follow substantially more accounts than they're followed by.
The accounts in this fake follower network that have actually tweeted are repetitive, with various hacks/exploits being a theme of the repeated tweets (OnlyFans Premium for free, Pokemon Go spoofing, hacks for viewing private Instagram content, etc).
These accounts also retweet a lot of the same accounts, mostly promotional accounts in a variety of languages. A couple of political accounts turn up as well: GOP US senate candidate @realJohnACastro and Chilean senator @chahuan.
What accounts does this fake follower network follow? Lots of variety: everything from cryptocurrency accounts to escorts to attorneys. Interestingly, the account with the most followers from this network, @thouse_opinions, is labeled as Chinese state-affiliated media by Twitter.
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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.