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Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

May 28, 2021 • 10 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X

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@ZellaQuixote

We've previously documented that the "Round Year Fun" apps ("My Twitter Family" etc) force you to follow other accounts without your knowledge. Interestingly, the main Round Year Fun website shares an IP address with a website that sells Twitter followers.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1383216080663945219

The follower sales website in question (realactivefollowers(dot)com) offers a trifecta of shady Twitter-related services: you can buy followers, likes, and even developer accounts (which enables aspiring botmakers to bypass the normal approval process, among other things).

@DrunkAlexJones

Realactivefollowers(dot)com also offers a free trial of 50 followers. We had @DrunkAlexJones take advantage of this offer with the goal of testing the hypothesis that the followers being sold on this website are unwitting users of the Round Year Fun apps.

@DrunkAlexJones

Within a few hours, @DrunkAlexJones experienced an infusion of new followers, most of which indeed have tweets posted via one or more of the Round Year Fun apps. (We were unable to check a few of the accounts as they are presently in protected status.)

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1383216598081622017

If you've already used one or more of the Round Year Fun apps, here are instructions on how to revoke their access to your account:

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1383216598081622017

Final opsec note: we regard both of the websites mentioned in this thread as potentially unsafe and used Tor to visit both of them. We recommend anyone researching sites that may be malicious take similar precautions.

@DreamHost

Update - both Round Year Fun and the realactivefollowers(dot)com were offline briefly after losing their original domain registration and hosting. Unfortunately, both sites are now back and hosted by @DreamHost.

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1409171562717196300

(typo, got an unnecessary "the" in there somehow)

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1409171562717196300

Here's a table of the accounts with the largest number of recent (and involuntary) Round Year Fun followers, based on the last 48 hours' worth of Round Year Fun tweets. There's a lot of variety, but cryptocurrency does seem to be a repeated theme.

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1398124738803798018

Update: found some posts on Black Hat World forums related to Round Year Fun/realactivefollowers(dot)com. A user named silentwandererr is promoting realactivefollowers(dot)com and claims to "have an unlimited amount of Twitter API keys".

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1398124738803798018

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Conspirador Norteño

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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.

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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-…

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cc: @ZellaQuixote

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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

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cc: @ZellaQuixote

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Conspirador Norteño

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cc: @ZellaQuixote

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