Post

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
Click again on or Share Via icon
Click on Copy Link to Tweet
Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
More info at Twitter Help

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

May 12, 2021 • 8 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X

Scrolly

@ZellaQuixote

This past Sunday (May 9th) was Mother's Day in multiple countries, and someone apparently chose to mark the occasion by creating a spam botnet to spread feel-good content related to #Xinjiang, China. #HolidayAstroturf

cc: @ZellaQuixote

@CaraLambrecht

This botnet consists of 65 accounts with default profile pics created on May 9th, 2021. All have tweeted exactly three times, with the exception of @CaraLambrecht, which has only tweeted twice. All tweets thus far were (supposedly) sent via Twitter for Android.

@CaraLambrecht

Each account in this botnet has tweeted the same three tweets in the same order (again, with the exception of @CaraLambrecht, which skipped one). The most recent tweet from each account is a Xinhua YouTube video of children (allegedly in Xinjiang) saying "happy Mother's Day".

We found a second astroturf network pushing the same "#Mother's Day Greetings from #Xinjiang" YouTube video. This network consists of 94 accounts with default profile pics created over a two-week period in May 2020. This network tweets via the Twitter Web App.

This network's tweets are repetitive, with tweets disputing reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and tweets about terrorism and separatism in Xinjiang as recurring themes. A few tweets countering US right-wing claims that China caused the COVID-19 pandemic turn up as well.

This network has a recurring glitch: many of its tweets contain links that don't work due to the lack of a space between the links and the tweet text. These glitchy tweets are generally duplicated across multiple accounts in the network.

@nytimes

Finally, who does this network follow? Mostly big accounts with millions or tens of millions of followers, so a small botnet doesn't really do much to inflate their follower counts. @nytimes is the only account followed by all 94 bots in the network.

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1391175028708892673

This is not the first time we've encountered astroturf networks focused on Xinjiang. Some previous examples:

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1391175028708892673

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1372007492276916224

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1352408453143269378

• • •

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

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @conspirator0

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

Jun 6

Some thoughts on perennial pitfalls in news coverage of social media manipulation that frequently result in reporting on fake accounts/bots/etc being far less accurate and informative than it ought to be...

cc: @ZellaQuixote
conspirator0.com/p/journalism-i…

The most common problem with news articles about fake accounts: failure to include any examples of fake accounts or evidence of their inauthenticity. Any or all of these headlines might be accurate, but you can't tell from the articles, due to absence of evidence.

A related issue: articles like the "Nearly Half of Biden/Trump's Followers Are Fake" and "Nearly Half Of Accounts Tweeting About Coronavirus Are Bots" pieces base their numbers on closed-source third party tools, which may or may not actually be detecting anything useful.

Read 6 tweets

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

Apr 26

Does thanking, praising, or insulting an LLM-based chatbot affect the speed or accuracy of its responses to questions involving basic arithmetic? Let's find out!

cc: @ZellaQuixote
conspirator0.com/p/how-to-talk-…

For this experiment, Meta’s Llama 3.1 model was asked to add and multiply random numbers between 10 and 100, with six different wordings: polite, rude, obsequious, urgent, and short and long neutral forms. Each combination of math operation and wording was tested 1000 times.

Results: asking the questions neutrally yielded a faster response than asking politely, rudely, obsequiously, or urgently, even if the neutral prompt was longer. Overall, obsequious math questions took the longest to process, followed by urgent, rude, and polite questions.

Read 6 tweets

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

Mar 8

Just for fun, I decided to search Amazon for books about cryptocurrency a couple days ago. The first result that popped up was a sponsored listing for a book series by an "author" with a GAN-generated face, "Scott Jenkins".

cc: @ZellaQuixote

Alleged author "Scott Jenkins" is allegedly published by publishing company Tigress Publishing, which also publishes two other authors with GAN-generated faces, "Morgan Reid" and "Susan Jeffries". (A fourth author uses a photo of unknown origin.)

As is the case with all unmodified StyleGAN-generated faces, the facial feature positioning is extremely consistent between the three alleged author images. This becomes obvious when the images are blended together.

Read 5 tweets

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

Feb 8

The people in these Facebook posts have been carving intricate wooden sculptures and baking massive loaves of bread shaped like bunnies, but nobody appreciates their work. That's not surprising, since both the "people" and their "work" are AI-generated images.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

In the last several days, Facebook's algorithm has served me posts of this sort from 18 different accounts that recycle many of the same AI-generated images. Six of these accounts have been renamed at least once.

The AI-generated images posted by these accounts include the aforementioned sculptures, sad birthdays, soldiers holding up cardboard signs with spelling errors, and farm scenes.

The common element: some sort of emotional appeal to real humans viewing the content.

Read 7 tweets

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

Jan 24

As Bluesky approaches 30 million users, people who run spam-for-hire operations are taking note. Here's a look at a network of fake Bluesky accounts associated with a spam operation that provides fake followers for multiple platforms.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

This fake follower network consists of 8070 Bluesky accounts created between Nov 30 and Dec 30, 2024. None has posted, although some have reposted here and there. Almost all of their biographies are in Portuguese, with the exception of a few whose biographies only contain emoji.

The accounts in this fake follower network use a variety of repeated or otherwise formulaic biographies, some of which are repeated dozens or hundred of times. Some of the biographies begin with unnecessary leading commas, and a few consist entirely of punctuation.

Read 8 tweets

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

Jan 10

It's presently unclear why, but over the past year someone has created a network of fake Facebook accounts pretending to be employees of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Many of the accounts in this network have GAN-generated faces.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

This network consists of (at least) 80 Facebook accounts, 48 of which use StyleGAN-generated faces as profile images. The remaining 32 all use the same image, a real photograph of a random person sitting in an office.

As is the case with all unmodified StyleGAN-generated faces, the main facial features (especially the eyes) are in the same position on all 48 AI-generated faces used by the network. This anomaly becomes obvious when the faces are blended together.