Despite the fact that musician Tommy Page passed away in 2017, his verified Twitter account (@Tommypage) is merrily tweeting away in 2021. Although one can never entirely rule out supernatural involvement, we think there's a more mundane explanation. . .
Tommy Page's verified account (@Tommypage, permanent ID 185366038) has had its display name changed from "Tommy Page" to "xən". Most of its followers and all of its old tweets have been purged, likely by a new owner following an account takeover.
We scrolled through @Tommypage's timeline and followers/followees, and noticed a few other blue-check verified accounts that appear to have been repurposed, including water polo player Judith Forca (@JudithForca, ID 504430504) and the band Vanquish (@Vanquishgirls, ID 194666247).
By exploring the networks of the accounts we'd found so far, we tracked down 23 verified accounts that appear to have been hijacked. The original owners are a mix of musicians, athletes, journalists, and TV/radio shows/personalities.
An interesting outlier among the hijacked blue-check accounts is @WeAreMAG (ID 846368933712199680). Originally a pro-Trump account created early in Trump's presidency, it has now been repurposed to amplify another of the hijacked blue-check accounts, @Vanquishgirls.
Update: some of the hijacked blue-check accounts have lost their blue check marks, and apparently not everyone is happy with this outcome.
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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.