Thread by @shelbygrossman

🇸🇦Today Twitter announced the takedown of 33 accounts linked to the government of Saudi Arabia. Buckle up for this one 🎢 it’s not your standard “Qatar is the worst” Saudi disinfo operation. Here’s our report: cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/news/twitter-t…

The network had “Royal Sockpuppets”, 👑🧦 fake accounts for real dissident Qatari Royals living in Saudi. The biggest account, pretending to be Fahad bin Abdullah Al-Thani, had >1mil followers. There were also accounts pretending to be an exiled Qatari interim govt.

How did these accounts get such big followings? It’s hard to say, for two reasons. First, many of the accounts engaged in handle switching. The now-suspended @QtrGov was not always @QtrGov - its mentions only go back a few months even though it has existed for years.

Second, many of the accounts appear to have wiped their tweets. There is a huge gap between the account creation dates and their earliest visible tweets.

Combining the handle switching and tweet wiping, it’s possible these accounts used spammy follow-back activity to grow their audience, wiped their tweets, and changed their handles, giving @QtrGov >90,000 followers and a veneer of legitimacy.

Also, Saudi media sometimes embedded tweets from these accounts in news articles, giving them more credibility. Here’s an example from al-ain.com

But there’s more. This Saudi government-linked network created fake Amnesty and Human Rights Watch images as if they had taken on the case of the alleged torture of Fahad in a Qatari prison.

Thanks to coauthors Khadija H. and @mle_ross. Full report here: raw.githubusercontent.com/stanfordio/pub… Twitter announcement:

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1314235339322601472?s=20

Our research builds on incredible work by @marcowenjones who uncovered and publicized a fake Qatar coup attempt rumor this network pushed.

https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1257198928765890562