It's not often that the majority of the tweets containing a given hashtag turn out to have been posted with TweetDeck, but so it goes with #UnSoloPaís. 627 of 667 tweets (94%) posted over the last week containing this hashtag were sent via TweetDeck.
Most of these tweets came from a network of 107 Spanish-language accounts that tweet almost exclusively via TweetDeck. These accounts were created between August 2020 and April 2021, mostly in batches of multiple accounts.
These accounts tweet a variety of hashtags, with #UnSoloPais (the unaccented form of #UnSoloPaís) being the most frequent, and various hashtags supporting President-elect of Ecuador Guillermo Lasso and attacking his opponent Andrés Arauz turning up frequently.
The content the network retweets is similar: pro-Lasso and anti-Arauz tweets. 3158 of 19822 of tweets retweeted by the botnet are of other accounts in the network, with the remainder mostly being larger political/media accounts.
In addition to the political content, most of the accounts in this network tweet repetitive Spanish greetings/pleasantries. (Some of these are obviously common phrases that are also tweeted by accounts that aren't bots/socks, but some of the repeated tweets are more distinctive.)
Finally, as is often the case with bot/sock networks, these accounts use stolen profile pics. TinEye was more effective at dealing with this bunch of images than either Google or Yandex reverse image searches.
Footnote: this network is similar to another (now suspended) Ecuador-focused TweetDeck network we looked at back in March:
• Community Notes successfully placed fact checks on some of the most viral false posts about the shooting
• ~42% of noted posts were subsequently deleted by their authors
• An effort to spread a misidentification of the shooter via Community Notes failed
THE BAD:
• Community Notes fact checks take several hours to show up, which doesn't help much in the initial "breaking news" phase after a violent event
• Many notes never accumulate enough ratings to determine their fate
12 questions for @TheDailyBeast regarding @JakeLahut's false April 2023 story, "How Ron DeSantis Is Taking a Page Out of Nixon’s Playbook", which (among other things) falsely portrays an AI-generated face as a "sexually graphic meme" of a real child.
@JoannaColes @TracyConnor
First, some background and a couple debunks of the false article, for those unfamiliar with the situation:
1. How did the decision to use serial fabulist Steven Jarvis as a source for this article come about?
2. Was anyone employed by or affiliated with The Daily Beast at the time the article was published aware of Steven Jarvis's extensive history of making false claims?
Meet @LovewinnLove (permanent ID 2707213009), a blue-check verified account with a GAN-generated face and a few additional odd characteristics. Despite being created in 2014, this account has no posts prior to October 2023.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
There are multiple indicators that @LovewinnLove's "face" is GAN-generated:
• unrealistic teeth (visible portion of bottom teeth is especially bizarre)
• odd texturing and seams in shirt fabric
• telltale eye positioning (more info in next post)
@LovewinnLove All unmodified StyleGAN-generated face images have the property that the major facial features (particularly the eyes) are in the same position on each image. Blending @LovewinnLove's profile image with 99 other GAN-generated faces demonstrates this nicely.
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.