Just for fun, we started digging through the accounts followed by 60 popular verified #MAGA accounts to see what there is to see. We found one weird thing that stuck out like a sore thumb (and will add more if/when we find more). . .
Meet @ScottIngwers. This account has never tweeted, never liked any tweets, has no bio, and uses a default profile pic. Despite this, its 342 followers include @DonaldJTrumpJr, @IvankaTrump, and @EricTrump.
Since the account has no content, there's not really much about @ScottIngwers to analyze, but we did notice that despite the account being totally empty, it's picked up followers in a variety of languages.
(also possibly interesting, one of @ScottIngwers protected followers, @wn_defenders, has the "1488" white supremacist dog whistle in its profile)
(possible partial explanation - as several folks have pointed out, there is a Trump Hotels executive with the same name as the empty account)
Moving on, four of the verified #MAGA accounts follow members of the Mad World News botnet:
Moving on, former NYC mayor and current #MAGA propaganda maven @RudyGiulian follows only 522 Twitter accounts. The first 7 are Trump, Pence, two Trump campaign accounts, and Trump's children, suggesting that Giuliani joined Twitter for the purpose of promoting Trump's candidacy.
Giuliani also follows @NealeyMaxwell, an account with a default pic, no bio, and 58 followers. In addition to pushing Giuliani's #MAGA propaganda, this account has a bunch of hydroxycholoroquine/herd immunity COVID-19 tweets, and likes Tulsi Gabbard but attacks other Democrats.
*oops, tag is wrong, should be @RudyGiuliani of course.
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.