Thread by @conspirator0

Here's a look at pro-Bolsonaro, pro-Trump follow train hashtag #Bolso22Trump24. (A "follow train" is a tweet listing a bunch of accounts to follow. Generally the listed accounts will follow back anyone who follows them and retweets the train.)

cc: @ZellaQuixote

This hashtag is not the first incarnation of this follower growth operation. Similar follow trains (from many of the same accounts) were tweeted with the hashtag #BolsoTrump2021 until early March 2021, when it was abruptly replaced with #Bolso22Trump24.

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1363608175744847875

We downloaded all available tweets containing #Bolso22Trump24, yielding 96310 tweets from 3920 accounts. Almost all (91148 tweets, 94.6%) are retweets, and the 4144 original tweets containing the hashtag originate with just 60 accounts.

These 60 accounts are the accounts (known as "conductors") posting the follow train tweets. Most of the trains were posted by just a few accounts with short usernames that have tweeted hundreds of trains each.

How much of the Twitter traffic containing #Bolso22Trump24 is follow trains? Almost all of it - 95871 of 96310 tweets and retweets (99.5%) are lists of 15 or more accounts. The accounts listed are a mix of the conductors themselves and random pro-Bolsonaro and pro-Trump accounts.

Although some of the primary train conductors use Bolsonaro's visage as their avatar, several of them use stolen profile pics. The stolen pics are a mix of stock photos and photos taken from news articles.

Bolsonaro and Trump feature prominently in many of the accounts' banners.