This network consists of 98 accounts created between August 2020 and October 2021. All have few or no followers, and the majority have female names. All 98 accounts (allegedly) tweet via the Twitter Web App.
The accounts in this network do two things:
• Post original tweets, which are generally duplicated verbatim across multiple accounts in the network. 54.8% of these tweets (1918/3499) contain the hashtag #Accelerationism.
• Retweet, reply to, and quote tweet popular accounts.
This network tweets about three general topics (with #Accelerationism turning up frequently in its tweets about all of them)
• political issues, mostly related to the USA and China
• the Suez canal, and blockages thereof
• cars (with a fixation on the "Need for Speed" games)
Like many networks of inauthentic accounts, this network uses stolen photographs of random people as profile pics. Google reverse image search proved effective for locating previous usage of the images.
Here's a paste of the IDs of the 98 accounts in this network, in case anyone wants it. pastebin.com/kMmciAMf
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Some threads on the use of retweet rooms. Users in these rooms can amplify hundreds of tweets per day hundreds of times each with minimal effort on the part of each individual user.
Meet @AnthonyWill_BSC and @MrThomasKoning, a duo of supposed cryptocurrency experts and "Gem Hunters" with GAN-generated profile pics and over 180,000 followers between them.
GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used by thispersondoesnotexist.com to generate fake faces such as those used by these two accounts. The major facial features are in the same position on both images, a fingerprint of unmodified GAN-generated face pics.
Both @AnthonyWill_BSC and @MrThomasKoning primarily tweet cryptocurrency/NFT promotions of varying sorts, with no apparent preference for any specific coin. The two accounts follow each other.
Here's where the fake story about General Dynamics workers quitting en masse over vaccine mandates started. I'm not holding my breath for @pnjaban or any of the other blue-check accounts who spread this lie to correct it, although they should.
Same thing with the "Southwest Airlines pilot's strike" rumor. The pilots' union, the FAA, and Southwest's CEO have all repeatedly refuted it, but the blue-check parrots of the right just keep on parroting, and I'll be shocked if any of them retract it.
The bots described in this previous thread have been banned, but a new batch of accounts with GAN-generated face pics and screenshots of fake Elon Musk tweets has arisen to replace them. #ThisPersonDoesNotExistAndNeitherDoesThisElonMuskTweet
The new incarnation of the network consists of (at least) 128 accounts created between August 18th and October 10th 2020. All tweet exclusively via the Twitter Web App (allegedly), and all their tweets to date are either replies or retweets.
The network's replies fall into three categories:
• replies containing screenshots fake Elon Musk tweets advertising watches and random text
• replies consisting entirely of random text
• repetitive replies containing images
Meet @DanielWilson_1, @PradipWebber, and @Sybil__Evans, a trio of interesting accounts that each got thousands of followers via the "Round Year Fun"/realactivefollowers(dot)com family of malicious Twitter apps ("My Twitter Family", "My Twitter Crush", etc).
If you've used any of the "Round Year Fun" apps ("My Twitter Family", "My Twitter Crush", etc), your account has probably involuntarily followed one or more of the customers of a follower sales site. Here's how to revoke the apps' access to your account:
Massive infusions of involuntary followers from Round Year Fun is not the only thing @DanielWilson_1, @PradipWebber, and @Sybil__Evans have in common. Each has also quote tweeted pro-CCP/anti-Guo Wengui cartoons (in some cases, from accounts subsequently suspended by Twitter).
Meet @kris_verma1984, a Twitter account that ostensibly belongs to a guest writer for the Sydney Morning Herald (@smh) by the name of "Kris Harrison" and resembles the now-suspended fake Guardian journalist account @jessica05181 in multiple interesting ways.
A google search of the Sydney Morning Herald's website for "Kris Harrison" turns up no content written by anyone named "Kris Harrison", and @kris_verma1984 has never linked any Sydney Morning Herald content whatsoever.
As was the case with fake Guardian journalist @jessica05181, @kris_verma1984 (permanent ID 1074631446067843072) was renamed along the way. Internet Archive confirms that back in 2020 it was named @addiaeeprint and its display name was "Maria Pia" rather than "Kris Harrison".