Thread by @conspirator0

We started looking at who the accounts in the astroturf network documented in this thread from Feb 9th follow, and discovered a whole bunch more accounts that we believe to be part of the network. #SaturdayShenaniGANs

cc: @ZellaQuixote

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1359607043724873733

We found 64848 accounts that we believe to be part of the network (although we may still have missed some). With rare exceptions, they have few tweets and follow far more accounts than they have followers. They're mostly older accounts, almost all created 2018 or earlier.

Who do the accounts in this network follow? It's an eclectic mix that includes government officials from multiple countries, tech entrepreneurs, cryptocurrency accounts, and a "coronavirus news" account, among others.

At least 4991 of the accounts in this network use GAN-generated profile pics. (GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used by thispersondoesnotexist.com to produce fake face pictures.)

Here's an animated visualization of blending all 4991 GAN-generated profile pics. The major facial features (particularly the eyes) are located in the same position on each image, a fingerprint of unmodified GAN-generated face pics.

Although the operators of this network could have easily generated 4991 unique fake faces, many of the GAN-generated face pics are in fact repeated across multiple accounts.

As has been the case with other networks we've seen that contain large numbers of accounts with GAN-generated pics, the operators of this network don't appear to have done much (or any) quality control - many of the GAN-generated pics have extremely bizarre visual artifacts.

The accounts in this network have tweeted via a wide variety of apps in the past, but the Twitter Android app is a clear favorite among their recent traffic, especially with the accounts using GAN-generated profile pics. Most tweets were posted in 2020 or 2021.

These accounts tweet (and retweet) in a variety of languages, with Arabic, English, and Turkish being the most common. Their original tweets (non-retweets) are repetitive, and are mostly religious in nature, with some follower tracking spam thrown in for good measure.

Who does this network amplify? As with the accounts they follow, it's an eclectic (although somewhat different) lineup. Government officials from South Africa (Minister of Transport @MbalulaFikile) and Pakistan (Punjab governor @ChMSarwar) are among the most frequent fliers.

Speaking of South Africa, this network has bestowed thousands of retweets on South Africa-related tweets from @bourneprophecy (no apparent connection to the Jason Bourne books/films), an account with a stock photo as profile pic and only 578 followers.