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21 Sep, 7 tweets, 4 min read
Why do so many Journey fans have a goal of exactly 18K followers, and why are all of their biographies identical? #DontStopAstroturfin

cc: @ZellaQuixote Image
The weirdly identical Journey fan accounts are part of a network consisting of (at least) 28750 accounts created in Aug/Sept 2021. All have similar-looking random names, no tweets, few or no followers, follow similar numbers of accounts, and have liked similar numbers of tweets. ImageImage
No account in this network has a unique biography. The 28750 accounts use a total of 1054 distinct biographies (including an empty biography), each of which appears on at least 11 accounts. Image
The accounts in this network do two things: like and follow. The tweets liked by the network are mostly from cryptocurrency accounts, although a couple political accounts appear: @JuanOrlandoH (President of Honduras) and @AfD_Muenster (affiliated with German far-right party AfD). Image
The set of accounts followed by the botnet is a bit more varied, although cryptocurrency is once again a major theme. Various athletes, musicians, a bank, and other business accounts turn up as well. Image
Here are follow order by creation date scatter plots for the accounts most frequently followed by the astroturf network. The followers from the network appears as horizontal streaks (highlighted in red for clarity).
This network has some similarities to another recently-created astroturf network (including the artificial inflation of the like count on @JuanOrlandoH tweets) and may or may not be related.

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More from @conspirator0

Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
18 Sep
Another day, another evidence-free viral rumor. The claim that General Dynamics canceled their vaccine mandate appears to have originated with @AlexGiorgio6, a Twitter account that has no apparent connection to General Dynamics or any journalistic entity.

cc: @ZellaQuixote Image
The @AlexGiorgio6 account did eventually supply a "source" for their claim that General Dynamics was dropping its vaccine mandate, but that "source" is an obscure website quoting an unsourced tweet from another random Twitter account (@WillRock2424). ImageImageImage
At least four "news" sites have now amplified this bit of disinformation: beforeitsnews(dot)com, sgtreport(dot)com, investmentwatchblog(dot)com, and notmainstreamnews(dot)us. All four "articles" consist of tweets repeating the rumor accompanied by no actual information. ImageImageImageImage
Read 6 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
12 Sep
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
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.
Read 6 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
6 Sep
It's #LaborDay weekend, and a botnet with stolen profile pics is retweeting various giveaway tweets and pretending to be from Michigan.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
This botnet consists of 11 accounts created in early 2021. All follow far more accounts than they are followed by, and ll but one have their profile location set to somewhere in Michigan (@JacobMassengil's location is simply "USA").
Each account in this botnet tweets via its own custom app with a name consisting of 30 random letters and digits (e.g., @CarlaFreemly tweets via "LcOkMRRPjRblxHlQPo8OnwltoYXFWg"). Most also have older tweets sent via apps that were subsequently removed (the erased******* apps).
Read 5 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
4 Sep
Meet @jessica05181, a Twitter account with 32K followers that ostensibly belongs to a @Guardian reporter by the name of "Jessica Claire". As is often the case, things are not as they seem.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
A Google search of the Guardian's website for "Jessica Claire" turns up no articles written by anyone named "Jessica Claire", and although @jessica05181 has shared 111 @Guardian articles on Twitter, none of the authors have names remotely similar to "Jessica Claire".
As it turns out, @jessica05181 (permanent ID 1036130530666983425), wasn't always named @jessica05181. Previous names include @Adrian84474494 (which may be its original handle) and @thrawedmclag, and at least one early reply refers to it as "Adrian".
Read 7 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
1 Sep
It's a great day for a thread on some interesting aspects of the tweets and followers of @Ravagiing (permanent ID 2191704602), the right-wing Twitter account featured in a recent @BuzzFeedNews investigation.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
buzzfeednews.com/article/kenben…
Although @Ravagiing is presently a right-wing Twitter account that tweets in English, it wasn't always so. Back in early 2014, it tweeted almost exclusively in Arabic. It appears to have gone silent in late April 2014 and woke back up in April 2018 as an English-language account.
Back in 2014 when it tweeted in Arabic, @Ravagiing was 100% automated, tweeting around the clock via a custom app. Most of the automated Arabic content looks like Quran verses.
Read 11 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
29 Aug
Spam networks tweeting propaganda about Xinjiang have been a recurring thing for the past year or so. Here's one such network that appears to be trying to get specific bloggers and journalists to notice specific Xinjiang-related YouTube videos.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
This particular network consists of 354 accounts created between July 2019 and August 2021. Hilariously, the operators of the network on multiple occasions created multiple accounts in a row with the same name (e.g. @cumberland_ted and @ted_cumberland, created 4 minutes apart).
This network's content is repetitive, and mostly consists of articles and videos related to Xinjiang (both feel-good stories and denial of human rights abuses). Most of the repetitive tweets have at least two accounts tagged in them, generally bloggers and media accounts.
Read 6 tweets

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