The repetitive biographies that frequently mention beavers may be silly, but the fact that you can pay to have thousands of these accounts retweet, reply to, or follow you is even sillier. #SundaySpam#BeaverAstroturf
These accounts are part of an astroturf network consisting of (at least) 11599 accounts created (mostly) in 2021. Each account has a two word biography composed of a capitalized adjective followed by a lowercase noun, drawn from a pool of 36 adjectives and 36 nouns.
The accounts in this network follow a variety of accounts, with cryptocurrency as a recurring theme. The account followed by the largest swath of the network is @PRm4u_official, the "official" account of prm4u(dot)com, a website selling SMM ("social media management") services.
prm4u(dot)com (the site promoted by @PRm4u_official) sells Twitter retweets, replies, likes and followers, and offers parallel services for several other social media platforms. Interestingly, you can choose the device type for several of the services (iOS retweets, for example).
The prm4u(dot)com site was registered quite recently - July 18, 2021. As always, we recommend taking precautions when checking out shady websites (we visited this one through Tor), and buying social media followers and engagement from mysterious third parties is generally unwise.
Here's a slideshow of follow order by creation date plots for the 25 accounts most frequently followed by the network, with the followers from the network highlighted in red. (Some of the plots have anomalies indicating the potential presence of other bulk follow networks).
(more on follow order by creation date plots, including python source code)
The majority of this network's content was posted in 2021, mostly via the Twitter Web App but with some tweets from smartphone apps as well. (Unsurprising, given that customers can select the device type for the retweets etc that they buy.) Most of the content is retweets.
Who/what does this network amplify? Lots of variety; cryptocurrency is a recurring theme, with @justinsuntron as the most frequently amplified account. This network has also retweeted hashtag-laden tweets from a few tiny accounts (examples: @Richard28680795 and @JosephG84349587).
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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.
It's a great day to look at a network of Bluesky spam accounts with randomized names. #SundaySpam
cc: @ZellaQuixote
This spam network consists of (at least) 401 accounts, all of which were created (or added to the Bluesky app view) in August 2023. These accounts do not follow each other; rather, each one follows a small number of popular Bluesky accounts.
The accounts in this network cycle rhythmically between posting three types of content:
• reposts
• posts containing links to news articles
• posts containing links to news articles accompanied by images
Meet @thisisorange, a Twitter account created in February 2022 with a gold "verified organization" badge, thousands of batch-created fake followers, and a couple other interesting traits.
Verified organizations on Twitter can verify affiliated accounts (employees, teams, brand names, etc), which receive blue checkmarks as well as an organization badge (help.twitter.com/en/using-twitt…). The @thisisorange account has thousands of affiliates, mostly cryptocurrency accounts.
How did this come about? The website linked on @thisisorange's profile (orange dot associates) apparently allows one to become an affiliate simply by providing a Twitter account and a cryptocurrency wallet.