I thought I'd put together a case study for progressive Democrats and progressive Independents. I hope it will be useful.

Anonymous accts have been hijacking our language and then using it to advance their agenda for years. I've been studying this activity for some time.

1/
I will be highlighting one such account. There are layers of deception that such accounts use which most people on Twitter do not have the time to uncover.

I first noticed this acct due to a long thread that was targeting Ana Kasparian. The operator was backing Jimmy Dore.

2/
*Note: the above is just the opening sequence of a much longer thread.

Let's start with the very beginning of this thread, "Nurse here, Ana!"

How is that deceptive? Well, earlier in 2020, this acct tweeted, "I'd quit if I were a nurse."

3/
But maybe the operator of this acct just became a nurse later in 2020?

Not according to other tweets this acct put out. "As a nurse that's worked in healthcare for decades."

This acct is using this claim of being a nurse to add unearned credibility to their narrative.

4/
But that is far from the full extent of the deception. This account initially had a different handle when it first became active in late 2019. And it had a different username, as opposed to the "Screenname" the acct had listed on the acct in March 2020, as seen in tweet #3.

5/
The username reads "ابو طارق" (read from right to left), which translates to "Abu Tariq".

"Abu" means "father of." But later, as seen in tweet #4, the operator said they are a mom.

Another bit of deception is found in the "Joined Date" for this acct. It reads "May 2013".

6/
How is that deceptive? Well, by referring to the first available text-based archive (JSON) in the Wayback archives, we find that the acct had only posted 85 total statuses by late February 2020 and also had only 3 followers.

This is what is referred to as a "vintage acct."

7/
That "May 2013" date makes the acct seem more authentic, as though the operator has been active on Twitter for over seven years. But it hasn't.

The joined date also acts as a way to hide that this account is a prolific spammer. Someone looking at the acct would not find

8/
the 51.7K statuses to be suspicious at first glance because they'd infer that these statuses had been accumulated over seven years. But in reality, the bulk of them were accumulated in less than one year.

This acct has averaged 148 statuses a day for nearly a year.

9/
The recent activity looks like this 👇. Barely any time allocated to sleep, let alone do anything else, such as parenting. In some bursts, the acct produces 46-55 tweets an hour.

10/
*Note: just because this acct had an Arabic username when it first became active does not necessarily mean the operator is in the Middle East. There are vintage accounts parked all over Twitter which use Japanese, Australian, African, European and other false personas.

11/
What has this account been doing via this progressive nurse persona? Lately, the operator has been trying to sneakily undermine Bernie and AOC at times.

12/
The operator is also trying to suggest that progressives are actually very interested in uniting with the Boogaloo Boys.

(I cannot rule out that this acct is an alt of a Boogaloo Boy. But this operator could be anywhere in the world, since Twitter is a global platform.)

13/
During the election, this acct was smearing Biden as a child predator, using the "mom" part of the persona to refer to an imaginary book the operator was definitely writing, except in Nov 2020, the narrative suddenly shifted to "I could make an educational book."

14/
Upon reviewing those tweets carefully, you can see how the author just keeps rearranging the content of the tweets to say the same things without triggering Twitter's spam filters. This will also be apparent in much of the forthcoming content.

15/
The operator was also trying to convince people to vote Green, which would potentially help Trump attain a second term, since this messaging was targeted at progressives.

Within this messaging, there's a sneaky attempt to suggest election machine shenanigans via that

16/
#HiddenMenu talking point. This messaging is very carefully thought out and the use of a hashtag makes that "Hidden Menu" claim stand out within the content of the tweet.

But we know that talking point is nonsense, because of the below graphic this acct tweeted.

17/
The menu is not, in fact, hidden. It's a very visible third option in that graphic, along with Biden and Trump.

There was also repetitive use of graphics which claim that Biden and Trump are the same. This is no different than some of the spam that targeted Clinton in 2016.

18/
If you want to know why some moderate Dems were rather snappy and perhaps even seemingly dismissive during the elections, it is because they were getting spammed by trolls like these. It is not pleasant to see blatant lies being used to suggest some nonexistent equivalence.

19/
Such trolls also push this "corporate fascism" line, which, in effect, provides cover for real fascism, the kind of fascism that this 'progressive' was eager to try to get progressives to ally with, as seen with those Boog tweets.

These talking points are quite deliberate.

/20
The operator also seems to want the US economy to crash in the middle of a pandemic. It is this which strongly suggests that the operator is not dependent on the US economy to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head.

/21
There's more to this acct that those who are interested can review by visiting the acct and scrolling through its activity. As stated at the beginning, this is just a case study and there are plenty of others like it.

Until at least one big progressive influencer decides

/22
to study this issue and then use their social media platform to inform other progressives, this problem will persist. Only knowledge can combat this, because blocking accounts or suspending accts doesn't really address the problem. They keep coming back. Knowledge is power.

/end

• • •

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

Keep Current with The Dragnet News**

The Dragnet News** 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 @Dragnet_News

3 Feb
This tweet is how a troll army tries to trick people. Elon Musk liking someone's tweet doesn't result in them accumulating nearly 950K followers as of right now.

How can you tell? It's simple. Look through Musk's likes and find rando accts and check their follower counts.

1/ Image
You can then compare their follower count to archive records to see what the follower count was before Musk liked their tweet.

But really, there are plenty of examples where you don't need to go thru that extra effort. Like this acct, which only has 401 followers at present.

2/ Image
What is additionally suspicious about this WSB Chairman acct is this 👇, which makes it seem like maybe this acct is a repurposed QAnon acct in disguise.

Moreover, this acct was created in May 2017 & deleted all tweets from before when it changed the handle to the current one. Image
Read 4 tweets
28 Dec 20
Thread: The Mystery of "Gary Forbes."

In October 2015, the NYT wrote about how Trump came to dominate Twitter, with one section describing how "hundreds of thousands of strangers defend him."

But it was the section about "Gary Forbes" that I found most curious of all.

1/
It was not just the coordinated activity which I found notable. It was also the careful language they used regarding "Gary Forbes."

"A man identifying himself as Gary Forbes" sounds like a very careful way to say that they weren't able to independently verify his identity.

2/
Further, "Gary Forbes" referred the NYT to the Trump campaign and Hope Hicks said "Forbes" was not affiliated with the campaign. So, someone was being misleading there.

The biggest reason that this "Gary Forbes" caught my eye is because I had previously come across a

3/
Read 7 tweets
24 Jun 20
Twitter history thread:

In my estimation, the best way to know what is happening on Twitter now is to see what happened in the past.

For example, let's look at 'Jennifer Myers.'

(Note that I don't expect many will see this thread as I don't have a network promoting me.) 🙃
[2] When we look through some of the tweets this account put out in 2016, we notice a peculiar pattern. Many of the tweets have roughly the same amount of retweets. A sampling is provided below.
[3] When we look closer to see who retweeted those tweets, we see that only 18 of the 398 retweeters still remain on the list.

Note that the retweet count stays as it was at its peak, even as accounts are deleted or suspended.

This figure tells us that 380 accts are now absent.
Read 12 tweets
7 Jun 20
A thread examining the origins of #DefundThePolice:

In 2014 & 2015, this hashtag began being spammed on Twitter. The first Twitter account to frequently spam this hashtag is one that is currently promoting Trump and QAnon.

[2] Another account which heavily spammed this hashtag in 2015 is currently inactive. It has not tweeted or liked any content for over seventeen months.

This account spammed this hashtag from August to December 2015.
[3] As you can see in that screenshot, this account has a Facebook page it kept linking to. That Facebook page can be found here: facebook.com/ThePeopleRISING

There is also a blog listed in the bio of this Twitter account.

The first thing that struck me was how active this FB was-
Read 11 tweets
20 Apr 20
A thread for Progressives:

You ever feel like you're experiencing Groundhog's Day? I've been experiencing this feeling ever since the 2020 primary season began.

I would like to illustrate this by reviewing a shapeshifting account which operated from April 2015 to July 2016. Image
[2] The first thing I'd like to note is that this account is just one of many that were never cleaned up by Twitter. Perhaps one might believe that Twitter has taken this issue seriously. But have they?

What happened in 2016 on social media was a matter of volume. That volume -
[3] has not been addressed. Twitter has continuously low-balled the volume, as seen by the initial numbers they revealed to the public which kept growing larger due to pressure from reporters, investigators & Congress.

I digress. Let's take a look at the early life of this acct ImageImageImageImage
Read 18 tweets
8 Dec 19
A thread on a matter I've been thinking about and digging into for a bit:

[1] New evidence has come to light which further supports a theory I've had, based on the timing of certain events. For instance, NATO StratCom recently performed a study on manipulation service providers.
[2] The report on this study can be found here.

buzzfeednews.com/article/albert…
[3] They found that only 3 of the 100 impostor Twitter accounts were removed from Twitter after reporting. This equates to 97% of the fraudulent social media accounts on Twitter remaining active despite having been reported. Image
Read 20 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!