What's up with these accounts with German biographies retweeting "election fraud" conspiracy theories from Trump and his supporting cast? #Spamtastic
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
Answer: they're part of a botnet, consisting of 12 accounts automated via a custom app called "TweetFoxx". Although they do have occasional organic tweets, the vast majority of their content (19802 of 20233 tweets since September 1st, 2020, or 97.9%) is automated.
The majority of accounts in this botnet operate on very similar schedules. The exception is @TaioSchmid , which is active for fewer hours a day and skips out on retweeting some of the tweets amplified by its compatriots.
Almost all of this botnet's content (99.4%) is retweets. The majority of the tweets amplified (88.5%) are in German, with English in second place (8.4%), and various other languages rounding out the remainder. What accounts do they retweet?
Unsurprisingly given the language breakdown, 29 of the 30 accounts most frequently retweeted by the botnet are German-language accounts, the exception being @realDonaldTrump. The English-language accounts they retweet are almost all major Western right-wing accounts.
Incidentally, we found this botnet because 11 of the 12 accounts amplified @pastormarkburns's unsubstantiated rumor about Trump pardoning Julian Assange.
https://twitter.com/ZellaQuixote/status/1339010115328872448
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
