Thread by @conspirator0

It's a Thursday, which is an excellent time to look at a recently created fake follower/retweet botnet that uses GAN-generated profile pics (similar to those produced by thispersondoesnotexist.com). #ThursdayShenaniGANs

cc: @ZellaQuixote

This botnet consists of 164 accounts created between October 9th and October 13th, 2020. All of them either have never tweeted or post all of their tweets (nearly all of which are retweets) via "Twitter Web App".

Here are the profile pics of all 164 accounts in this botnet, as well as the result of blending them together. Like all unmodified pics produced by StyleGAN (the neural network used by thispersondoesnotexist.com), the eyes, nose, and mouth are in the same location on every image.

(more on GAN-generated face pics, the detection thereof, and their use by Twitter troll accounts, socks, and botnets)

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1322704400226394112

Only 77 of the 164 accounts in this network have tweeted, and their tweets are nearly all retweets. The sole exception is a quote tweet from @lisa_calas (which could be a misfired retweet resulting from the new Twitter feature that pops up the quote tweet dialog when retweeting).

Upon whom does this network bestow its attention? Political/media accounts (particularly members of Congress), the majority of which are Republican/right-wing, although there are a few exceptions (15 of the accounts have retweeted Biden, for example).

Many thanks to @EJGibney who originally spotted the botnet described in this thread.