Do you want to pay complete strangers on the Internet (whose qualifications and skills you know nothing about) to do your homework for you? There's a spam network for that. #FridayFeeling
By searching for the repeated "Hire us to do your <list of homework topics>" tweets shown in the previous collage and exploring the networks of the resulting accounts, we found 300 accounts posting repetitive tweets offering homework/essay writing services for hire.
The accounts in the network (allegedly) send the majority of their tweets via the Twitter Android app, although a number of other apps show up as well. Most tweets are either original tweets or replies (very few retweets or quote tweets).
The original tweets and replies posted by this network are highly repetitive, with the same tweets and replies duplicated dozens or hundreds of times across many accounts. The repeated tweets are all offers to do other people's homework assignments in exchange for payment.
The accounts in this network primarily post their spammy replies to tweets containing words like "essay", "assignment", and "homework". They reply quickly, with the median time between the original tweet and the reply being just over two minutes (129.1 seconds, to be precise).
These accounts don't retweet much, and when they do retweet they're usually retweeting each other's spam - 172 of the 300 accounts have retweeted or been retweeted by other members of the network within their last 3200 tweets.
The homework/essay writing services spammers also follow each other profusely, with 264 of the 300 accounts having a follow connection with at least one (and usually many) of the other homework spammers.
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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.