In Aug 2020, someone redirected antifa(dot)com to joebiden(dot)com, and has now switched it to whitehouse(dot)gov. Even though anyone can buy a domain and point it at any website, some folks falsely insist Biden is affiliated with the antifa(dot)com domain name.

cc @ZellaQuixote
Whoever bought the antifa(dot)com domain also appears to have briefly pointed it at kamalaharris(dot)org and buildbackbetter(dot)gov. Again, this does not require the consent or involvement of the website being redirected to.
We downloaded tweets containing links to antifa(dot)com. There are four spikes in tweet volume, corresponding to when major accounts noticed the redirect and tweeted about it. (Earlier traffic is off-topic and extremely light, and has thus been excluded from this analysis.)
Here are the earliest on-topic tweets linking antifa(dot)com, from August 2020. The account that posted the first 2 tweets, @MannyV129, was created 3 days before posting them and did not tweet about any topic other than the antifa(dot)com website in its first 4 weeks on Twitter.
Many of the early tweets linking antifa(dot)com after it was redirected to Biden's campaign site appear to be attempts to get major accounts to notice it. 22 of the first 30 tweets have at least one account with 100K+ followers tagged. @ACTBrigitte was first to take the bait.
We've seen this technique of spreading disinfo by shopping it around to big accounts via replies before. Examples:

2017: links to early QAnon 4chan posts ()
2020: bogus claim that Bill Barr tried to visit Ghislaine Maxwell in jail ()
Retweet network for tweets linking antifa(dot)com subsequent to it being redirected at Biden's campaign site (and later the White House). @getongab, @BrandonStraka, @charliekirk11, @aubrey_huff, and @RyanAFournier have all been major nodes at varying points in time.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Conspirador Norteño

Conspirador Norteño Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @conspirator0

24 Jan
A conspiracy theory that a member of Joe Biden's Secret Service detail is his "Chinese government handler" has been floating around MAGA Twitter since the inauguration. (The man in question is of Korean descent and has worked for the Secret Service for years.)

cc: @ZellaQuixote Image
The false claim that one of the Secret Service agents guarding Biden is his "Chinese Handler" started popping up here and there in December 2020 (and possibly earlier, as it's not unlikely that some related content was removed as part of Twitter's recent QAnon purge). Image
The bogus "Biden's secret service agent is his CCP handler" narrative appears to have gained traction on two previous occasions. The first was December 19th, 2020, and was the result of multiple accounts misrepresenting a video posted by @thehill of Biden attending church. Image
Read 4 tweets
22 Jan
Are tweets about Xinjiang from @ChineseEmbinUS being artificially amplified by a network of repetitively named batch-created accounts? (Spoiler: yes, and they retweet other Chinese diplomatic and state media accounts as well.)

cc: @ZellaQuixote
We downloaded recent retweets of @ChineseEmbinUS's tweets, and noticed several spikes in account creation (mostly in early 2020). The accounts created during these spikes have distinctive patterns in their names, similar numbers of tweets/likes, and so on.
By exploring the retweeters of the other tweets retweeted by these accounts, we found a total of 674 batch-created accounts, created between December 2019 and January 2021. The naming schemes sometimes vary from batch to batch (table show representatives examples).
Read 7 tweets
20 Jan
It's a Tuesday in January, which is a great time to look at a retweet botnet that uses custom apps with official-sounding names like "Mobile App 9.2".

cc: @ZellaQuixote
This botnet consist of 71 accounts, the majority of which were made in 2017 or 2018 but were largely dormant until December 2020. Almost all recent content is automated via "Mobile App 9.2", with a few other custom apps thrown in. The accounts tweet on very similar schedules.
Almost all of this botnet's tweets are retweets (6045 of 6372 tweets, 94.8%), and almost all content is in Turkish (6202 of 6372 tweets, 97.3%).
Read 5 tweets
19 Jan
A bogus claim from @amuse that Biden's transition team asked the National Guard not to station troops near Biden who have voted in GOP primaries/contributed to GOP candidates went viral recently, being retweeted thousands of times and copied by several accounts.

cc @ZellaQuixote
This is not @amuse's first disinfo rodeo. Previous hits include falsely claiming that the QAnon shaman is antifa (he's been identified as Trump supporter Jacob Chansley and arrested) and stating that both Biden and Trump got more than 270 electoral votes (this didn't happen).
One last thing: @amuse regularly deletes older tweets, hiding from the casual observer the account's track record of peddling disinformation. Plenty of @amuse's tweets have been archived, however, which is how we found most of the ones featured in this thread.
Read 4 tweets
18 Jan
Meet @TammyRu55487107, @AshleyG05060977, @MollyBa23420160, who (along with hundreds of their friends) all joined Twitter in late December 2020, and have all retweeted the same @sputnikvaccine tweet and nothing else. #SundaySpam

cc: @ZellaQuixote Image
These three accounts are part of a group of 634 batch-created followers of @sputnikvaccine, all of which were made on December 21st or December 22nd, 2020, and all of which have default profile pics and follow no other accounts. ImageImageImageImage
601 of these 634 accounts have tweeted, each of them exactly once. All of their tweets are retweets of the same @sputnikvaccine tweet, all (allegedly) posted via the Twitter Web App. 593 of them also liked the @sputnikvaccine tweet, and none has thus far liked another tweet. Image
Read 4 tweets
16 Jan
We're only 15 days into 2021, and someone has already spun up a network of "news" accounts with GAN-generated face pics (similar to the output of thispersondoesnotexist.com). Most of the "authors" at the sites they promote also have GAN pics. #FridayShenaniGANs

cc: @ZellaQuixote
We found a network of 11 accounts, all created on January 1st 2021 or later. Each account has a GAN-generated profile pic and tweets links to the "news" site listed in its profile (the sites are mostly cryptocurrency-themed), as well as retweeting other members of the network.
Most of these accounts' tweets are automated via "RSS Ground", and contain links to the "news" sites they promote. The automated tweets are sent on similar schedules, with occasional tweets via the Twitter website (mostly retweets of other accounts in the network).
Read 7 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!