Thread by @conspirator0

#DontBelieveArmenia trended this morning (October 6th, 2020). We took a gander at the tweets and accounts involved.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

The first recent #DontBelieveArmenia tweet (sporadic earlier occurrences exist) was sent yesterday (Oct 5 2020) by @CoronaMan19, an account created in March 2020 with 21 tweets and 1 follower. It spiked early this morning (Oct 6 2020), frequently exceeding 200 tweets per minute.

Although the accounts involved in the #DontBelieveArmenia trend aren't provably automated (based on apps/24 hour activity), the content is incredibly repetitive. The repeated tweets include spam directed at @iamcardib, as noted earlier by @josh_emerson.

https://twitter.com/josh_emerson/status/1313432532487208962

The accounts tweeting #DontBelieveArmenia were disproportionately created in mid-July and early October 2020, corresponding to military clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Accounts created during these spikes are responsible for 29.4% of the traffic (20582 of 69880 tweets).

The potentially bulk-created accounts tweeting #DontBelieveArmenia have a lot of repeated tweets, both presently and back in July for the accounts that were created in July. The July creations were largely dormant in August and September.

Retweet network for #DontBelieveArmenia, with accounts that were created during one of the two creation spikes shown in orange. The network is extremely dense as many of the major nodes are retweeting each other.