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12 Jul, 9 tweets, 5 min read
Expanding on this network a bit:

The 99 accounts in this network have tweeted 14,600 times. 780 of those tweets contain media. All 780 are screenshots of fake tweets supposedly written by Elon Musk. But what's the motivation behind the fake tweets? Let's look.
1/
Here are the images. Elon Musk did not tweet any of these. Each of the 7 fake screenshots encourages users to google specific types of watches, they're apparently so great that you'd be thanking the fake Elon tweets "later".

DON'T GOOGLE THEM. I did it for you 🙂
2/
Googling leads you to two domains; "outerwatches[.]com" and "otcwatches[.]com". Both domains show warnings of a "disease vector" and "scam" on open. The latter of the two domains was blocked and had to be accessed via archive.

Looks like a great deal, right? WRONG.
3/
First, let's talk locations. Their websites show an address in Singapore as their HQ. Their "support" phone line is a US area code in Northern California, and their Facebook page appears to be managed from Romania.
Big ol' red flags.
4/
Second, these "free" watches (all 7 in this group are $0) come with a cost. In a Reddit post to r/scams in 2019, one user described the watches as "cheap pieces of chit [sic]" likely sold in bulk. They noted a $10 shipping charge.
5/
 reddit.com/r/Scams/commen…
The Reddit post shows us that this scam has been active longer than these 2 domains [WhoIs searches found the "outer" domain was created Apr 2021 and the "otc" domain created Nov 2020.] The Reddit post was written in 2019.
6/
I would love to ask @outcarb for their thoughts but their account hasn't been active since 2019 and it's only tweeted 3 times.

Maybe @Namecheap has some thoughts on their service being used in this scam?
7/
As it turns out, the "free" watch scam isn't new. Here's a great piece from 2017 on a similar scheme.
@topicstories
8/
topic.com/there-s-no-suc…
Final note: This should go without saying but if a product seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Oh, and if you see a screenshot of a celebrity tweet encouraging you to google something... take a minute to see if they actually said it.
/END

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More from @EJGibney

EJ Gibney Profile picture
23 Apr
The people behind these networks of bot accounts recognize that StyleGAN faces give them the power to mass-generate accounts that appear authentic. A small SEO botnet seems harmless but this same tech has been used by mega corporations and int'l govt's for propaganda campaigns.
I know that I sound like a broken record, but we need to be educated on how to identify AI images en masse BEFORE the tech advances to the point of indistinction.

I'll include some recent examples of how this tech is being used in the next few tweets.
Read 7 tweets
EJ Gibney Profile picture
25 May 20
Thread: On May 20, Breitbart threw some red meat to its readership. Pure outrage-bait. The article inspired 8,000 comments, 1,400 of which on @disqus, I spent a couple of days reading and documenting the response to this article. Here's what I found. 1/
@slpng_giants
My focus was on the @disqus comment section. Disqus has a TOS for users and publishers called the "Basic Rules". First rule: "Hate speech and other forms of targeted and systematic harassment of people have no place on Disqus". Let's see how this goes. 2/
help.disqus.com/en/articles/17…
I began documenting a few days ago. The process takes some time and has to be done in small batches to preserve my sanity. 😅

The first thing that stuck out to me was the general tone of the most upvoted comments. I tweeted about it on May 22. 3/
Read 9 tweets
EJ Gibney Profile picture
20 Feb 20
Last summer, a very determined and very angry individual created several dozen fake accounts explicitly to harass and intimidate me and others who often tweet to @slpng_giants.
AI-generated faces were used to make the accounts appear authentic. (1)
It's not the first time that a person has been harassed on twitter dot com and I'm sure it won't be the last.

What's troubling is the tech. Untraceable faces of people who don't exist. The fake faces are meant to give the appearance of authenticity and it works. (2)
Had it not been for this Medium post by @kcimc I'd have had no idea what I was looking at. The tech has changed a bit since, but many of the artifacts in the images can still be identified -- missing earrings, warped backgrounds, misshapen teeth, etc. (3)
medium.com/@kcimc/how-to-…
Read 9 tweets
EJ Gibney Profile picture
3 Oct 19
THREAD: I tend to take anonymous commenters with a grain of salt, particularly when they're contributing to the conversation on Breitbart but I feel it's important to draw attention to how Breitbart's audience has responded to the President's "Civil War" tweet.
@slpng_giants
The comments in this thread were taken from the first 1/4 of the article's comments. I grabbed about 100 before needing to step away. It's disheartening and alarming to see an entire community drift toward violent extremism without seemingly any accountability.
The comment section on Breitbart is powered by @disqus. In 3 years of documenting Breitbart's comment section, I've flagged about 5,000 comments that violate Disqus' TOS. They know it's a cesspool and they've chosen to ignore it. I'd like to know why. help.disqus.com/en/articles/17…
Read 5 tweets
EJ Gibney Profile picture
21 Mar 19
THREAD: This past week, I ventured into the comments section of Breitbart’s article documenting the timeline of the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. In total, I collected about 500 comments. Roughly 10% of the total comments on the article. Here’s what I found. 1/
There were a few categories that dominated the comment thread. Twenty percent of the 500 comments collected expressed some form of joy or happiness over the results of the mass shooting where 51 people were murdered. 2/
Forty percent of the 500 comments collected were anti-Muslim, despite the article being a timeline of an attack on a mosque. This kind of Pavlovian response is evidence that Breitbart has trained its audience to voice outrage when the headline includes the word Muslim. 3/
Read 13 tweets
EJ Gibney Profile picture
1 Nov 18
Last week Breitbart announced planned legal action against @slpng_giants. In their statement, they believe SG made false claims about their content. I thought I'd take another dive into the Breitbart comment section to see how their content inspires and motivates hate.
The article seen here was published yesterday (10/31) and it looks to have been an effective dog-whistle. In total, I documented nearly 100 comments from this article that would be classified as "targeted harassment" or "threatening content" according to @disqus TOS.
In Breitbart articles that target @CNN, it's common to find the same kind of rhetoric that motivated Cesar Sayoc to send more than a dozen pipe bombs, three of which were intended for CNN.
Read 14 tweets

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