As it turns out, this is not @TheTexianDM's first encounter with an astroturf botnet. Here's a thread on an old botnet from which @TheTexianDM got a couple hundred retweets each on a set of #Texit tweets and about 3000 fake followers back in 2018.
This network consists of 36374 now-dormant accounts created in early 2018. Almost all of the accounts in the network either retweet or follow accounts; very few do both. All have either 0 tweets/0 likes or fewer likes than tweets.
None of the accounts in this network has been active since 2018. Back then they tweeted (allegedly) via a mix of the Twitter Web Client and Twitter for Android (iPhone is entirely absent).
Almost all of this botnet's content is retweets, and since the accounts generally retweeted without liking, a lot of the tweets amplified by the network wound up with far more retweets than likes.
This botnet retweeted and followed a wide variety of accounts back when it was active, although the majority of them are accounts that promote someone or a something (a product, service, politician etc) rather than personal accounts.
Here's a slideshow of follow order by creation date scatter plots for several of the accounts followed by the botnet. The bulk-created followers from the botnet show up as horizontal streaks (highlighted in red to make them easier to see).
(Thread on follow order by creation date scatter plots, including Python code for generating them)
How did this tweet from #Texit supporter and lieutenant governor candidate @TheTexianDM get more retweets than likes, mostly from accounts with GAN-generated profile pics?
Answer: @TheTexianDM's tweet was retweeted by an botnet consisting of (at least) 1081 accounts created in September, October, or November 2021. All 1081 accounts tweet exclusively via the Twitter Web app, and almost all of their tweets are retweets. #astroturf
The accounts in this network mostly retweet cryptocurrency/blockchain/NFT content, but there are exceptions - gaming accounts, musicians, and political accounts turn up as well.
This "account vetting guide" has been floating around Twitter on and off for a couple of years. As both a disinformation researcher and a Twitter user, I find multiple aspects of it problematic and therefore do not adhere to it.
First, the "bot detection" criteria are nonsense that will tell you nothing about whether or not a given account is automated. (All accounts are new and have few tweets at some point, plenty of humans tweet hundreds of times a day and make profuse spelling/grammar errors, etc.)
(Longer thread with more information on the detection (and misdetection) of bots, for those who are interested in more detail on the topic:
The coffee-craving cats are part of a 129 account cryptocurrency spam network. The accounts in this network were created in three batches in August and September 2021, and thus far have (allegedly) posted all of their tweets via the Twitter Web App.
These accounts do three things:
• post repetitive tweets, most of which are conversational-ish stuff like "I like to have a cup of coffee in the morning", but with occasioal spammy replies about crypto
• retweet crypto/blockchain accounts
• follow crypto/blockchain accounts
FYI: Despite the banner that says "BREAKING NEWS" in large friendly letters, the @FordJohnathan5 account is neither a news outlet nor a reliable source of information. The "no disinformation" claim is false, as the account has repeatedly presented falsehoods as #BreakingNews.
This is a lie. Neither of the tweets I screenshotted had been deleted by @FordJohnathan5
at the time of this tweet, and had been up for quite some time prior.
Additionally, I made good-faith efforts to get @FordJohnathan5 to address the false tweets LONG before posting this. I was ignored, as were many others who asked for sources.
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.
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.