We've looked at a variety of Twitter accounts being sold on dodgy sites, but @Online_agine holds the record for most followers with a whopping 712056.
(content warning: every single account described in this thread pretty much tweets nothing but porn videos)
cc: @ZellaQuixote
(content warning: every single account described in this thread pretty much tweets nothing but porn videos)
cc: @ZellaQuixote
Although porn account @Online_agine has been around since December 2009, its massive follower growth does not appear to have started until September 2020. (A dataset we captured in March 2020 in which it showed up confirms that it only had 34 followers at that point.)
As it turns out, @Online_agine (permanent ID 97295448) wasn't always named @Online_agine. It appears to have been originally named @Allanymsantos, which was changed to @Mayaunmoor sometime prior to its massive follower growth, and then finally to its current name.
Most of @Online_agine's older tweets have been deleted, but replies to its old tweets are still visible. The oldest replies (from 2010 and 2011) are nearly all in Portuguese, followed by an 8 year gap, after which it received a much larger volume of replies in multiple languages.
We didn't find evidence that @Online_agine's massive following was the result of bulk creation or automation to any significant degree. We did, however, discover that its 60th follower is another large porn account: @angelica2077, with 379279 followers of its own.
By exploring the set of accounts followed by the two accounts already mentioned (@angelica2077, @Online_agine), we found a network of 278 large porn accounts (at least 50K followers) that have follow relationships with at least 10 other members of the network.
The majority of these accounts were created within the last two years (mostly 2020). Almost all of the accounts appear to be retweeters or aggregators rather than sources of original content. (At least) 275 of 278 have retweeted or been retweeted by other members of the network.
The high degree of mutual retweeting leads to a possible explanation of how the newer porn accounts are gaining followers so quickly: they're being promoted by established members of the network that already have hundreds of thousands of followers.
One more thing: @Online_agine, the account that originally led us to this network is not the only one of these large porn accounts currently up for sale. At least four are listed on shady social media account sales site accs-market(dot)com, and others may be being sold elsewhere.
As always, be wary of clicking links to dodgy websites, whether they be social media account sales, porn sites, or whatever.
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