This past Saturday (August 12th, 2021), a couple thousand accounts tweeted "This is the truth of this world" accompanied by a brief video containing the phrase "Corona virus fake" at more or less the same time. #AstroturfedBullcrap#Spam
2882 tweets from 2875 accounts containing the "Corona virus fake" video and the text "This is the truth of this world" were posted over the span of 13 minutes. All but the first tweet end with a random 6 character code and were (allegedly) sent via "Twitter for iPhone".
Interestingly, the duplicated tweet was the first time 1754 of these 2875 accounts (61%) tweeted via iPhone (many are Android users). This suggests that some entity other than the account owners tweeted the iPhone video tweets from iPhones (or emulators) under their own control.
The "Corona virus fake" video was first tweeted by @cxie (permanent ID 11176362), an account created in 2007 with only three tweets (all recent). An Internet Archive snapshot from 2014 (web.archive.org/web/2014100304…) shows 256 tweets, however, so this account has been purged.
Despite being created in 2007, almost all of @cxie's followers were picked up in July 2021 or later. Interestingly, almost all of other accounts that posted the "Corona virus fake" video tweet (2843 of 2875, 98.9%) followed it en masse.
These replies about being hacked are consistent with the theory that the spammed video tweets were posted by someone other than the legitimate account holders (possibly the operator of the @cxie account):
In addition to the duplicate video tweets, 490 of those accounts sent identical replies in Chinese to @JHANDS08 in just five minutes. As with the video tweet spam, the first reply is from @cxie via "Twitter Web App" and the remainder were all sent via "Twitter for iPhone".
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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.