Thread by @conspirator0

It's a great day for a look at the astroturf network that followed @ElectionWiz (ID 1290635110149169152, formerly named @Wizard_Predicts among other things) back at the beginning of its Twitter career (immediately after its first follower, @Barnes_Law).

cc: @ZellaQuixote

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1325661477064339456

This network consists of (at least) 7991 accounts, most of which were created in the latter half of 2020 or the first half of 2021. The accounts in the network all follow at least 20 times as many accounts as they have followers of their own.

This astroturf network follows a variety of accounts. The most frequently followed accounts are @RanaSarkar, @AAldekhayel, and @thouse_opinions (the latter of which is marked "China state-affiliated media" by Twitter). @ElectionWiz is the 24th most-followed account.

Here's a slideshow of follow order by creation date scatter plots for the 25 accounts with the largest number of followers from the astroturf network, with the followers from the network highlighted in red.

Portions of this network also follow various smaller accounts that claim to be selling followers/likes/etc on various social media services. Examples:

@buysocialpack
@GetPlusFollows
@CoinCrackLive
@socialnetworkbo
@smmgrowth
@BoostClout
@CheapPanel
@prmotionme
@WINMEDIA8

In addition to following accounts en masse, this network also retweets tweets, and two of the five tweets it bestowed the most retweets on are tweets from @67dbfu3aNUBVVxr advertising social media services. #YouDontNeedActualFriendsToBecomeFamous