Thread by @conspirator0

We've seen some glitchy GAN-generated images used as Twitter profile pics before, but @jtatejtate1 kinda takes the cake with the utterly surreal "clothing" and "hat". #SaturdayShenanigans

cc: @ZellaQuixote

Here's a video showing @jtatejtate1's profile pic blended with a bunch of other GAN-generated images. The major facial features (eyes, nose, and mouth) are in the same location on each image.

(more on GAN-generated face pics and the usage thereof on Twitter accounts)

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

The GAN-generated image isn't the only thing that isn't human about @jtatejtate1. Its tweets appear to be automated based on two pieces of evidence. First, the app used to send its tweets has a blank name (as opposed to Twitter Web App/Twitter for iPhone/Twitter for Android/etc).

Second, there's a timing pattern in its original tweets (non-retweets): nearly all of them were sent one second into the minute they were tweeted. This is likely the result of the tweets being sent on a timer, with an average of one second of lag to reach Twitter's servers.

All of @jtatejtate1's tweets subsequent to August 14th, 2020 are retweets. The majority of them contain "music" or related terms. Its two most recent tweets are exceptions; it's possible it switched to keying off the word "algorithm" but too soon to tell.

Who follows @jtatejtate1? Weirdly, 31 of its followers are batch-created accounts from September 2013 that went on a 7 year hiatus and have now reactivated and started tweeting again. (@jtatejtate1 itself was created in July 2020).

By exploring the follower networks of those 31 accounts, we found a group of 119 accounts that we believe to be part of a bulk follow network, all created on September 26th 2013. These accounts were dormant from late 2013 until mid-2020, but are now tweeting and following again.

Who does this network follow? By and large, Arabic-language accounts. A notable exception is @freitagusa, a followback #MAGA account. Many of the accounts followed by the network have 2020 creation dates, indicating the follows are recent rather than from 2013.

The content tweeted by this network since it reawakened consists mostly of quotes plagiarized from a variety of sources. This doesn't give much of a clue as to its purpose, but we'll keep an eye on it and see what it does going forward.

H/T @nato_says_relax for the lead.