Thread by @conspirator0

Meet @Mollyycolllinss, @SteveeRogerr, @ThomassRichards, a trio of accounts created in December 2020/January 2021 with unnecessary extra letters in their names that appear to be exploiting @buzz_chronicle to harvest the content of thousands of Twitter threads.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

First, what is @buzz_chronicles? @buzz_chronicles is an account created in 2011 that saves copies of Twitter threads on an external website (buzzchronicles(dot)com). One triggers it by tagging it in a reply to the thread one wants to archive. (Similar to @threadreaderapp.)

The three new accounts we found (@Mollyycolllinss, @SteveeRogerr, and @ThomassRichards) have thus far done almost nothing but reply to threads and tag @buzz_chronicles with requests to archive said threads. 3716 of their 3752 tweets (99%) are replies of this nature.

This trio of accounts has thus far asked @buzz_chronicles to archive 3632 distinct threads from 2666 different accounts. This table shows the accounts whose threads the botnet has most frequently replied to, several of which are recently-suspended MAGA accounts.

Although these accounts allegedly tweet via the Twitter website, we suspect automation. The regularity of their schedules suggests this, as does the fact that the median time between replies from each account is only 11 seconds (a bit brief for a human to read an entire thread.)

One last detail - the profile pics used by these accounts appear to be GAN-generated (a la thispersondoesnotexist.com). The major facial features on all three are in the same locations on the images.

These accounts' profile images show a couple other signs of GAN-generation: nonsensical background and hair that "melts" into the background in an unnatural way, for example. More info on the use of GAN-generated pics on Twitter in this thread:

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

* oops - tag should be @buzz_chronicles (it's correct elsewhere in the thread)

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1356801967083958272?s=20