Sometimes inauthentic accounts are difficult to spot, but this is not one of those times. @CheiaKeeta (permanent ID 1432532435338629124) has helpfully used the #NewProfilePic hashtag to document a history of stealing multiple people's photos and using them as profile pics.
Although @CheiaKeeta claims to be an ICU nurse in New York, the two "nurse selfies" posted by the account depict two different people, neither of whom appears to work in a New York ICU. (@CheiaKeeta removed name/employer info from the pics in a possible attempt at obfuscation.)
Casting additional doubt on @CheiaKeeta's claims to be a New York ICU nurse is a tweet stating that 33 COVID patients died in @CheiaKeeta's unit on Sept 30, 2021. Since the entirety of NYC experienced 19 COVID deaths on the day in question, this appears to be false.
Another problem: in order to work 15 years as a nurse while not having been born in the 1980s, @CheiaKeeta would've had to have graduated nursing school at age 16 or younger.
The @CheiaKeeta account's use of stolen photos doesn't stop with "selfies" and profile pics. @CheiaKeeta's photo shoot from last year and the alleged photos of @CheiaKeeta's pets are also plagiarized.
Unsurprisingly, both of @CheiaKeeta's alleged Christmas trees are random photos swiped from the Internet.
Since the account is politically focused, it's not surprising that @CheiaKeeta tweets about participating in protests and marches. The evidence of participation is fake, however - for example, this photo @CheiaKeeta allegedly took at a march in 2021 is actually from 2017.
Additionally, it is extremely unlikely that @CheiaKeeta's father is both a judge and 30-year FBI veteran. Also, prosecutors don't generally bring their own children with them to the courtroom for shits and giggles.
Also in the "extremely unlikely" department, @CheiaKeeta supposedly received a COVID vaccine booster in September, again in October, and yet again in November.
Despite the obvious inauthenticity of many aspects of the @CheiaKeeta account, it is being promoted frequently on follow lists - mostly on the political left, but also here and there on the right.
Although there exists ample reason to suspect certain members of Congress of participation in/foreknowledge of the January 6th insurrection, Ted Cruz and Joe Manchin are not among them. Despite this, @CheiaKeeta has multiple tweets alleging or insinuating their involvement.
One more thing: this does not appear to be the first attempt to create this fake persona. A similar-looking "nurse" account named @cheecierom (now suspended) helped push the "Bill Barr tried to visit Ghislaine Maxwell in jail" nonsense in July 2020.
In a possibly interesting coincidence, the first account to tweet the July 2020 Maxwell/Barr disinformation (@Baligubadle1, presently protected) is the first smaller account (fewer than 100,000 followers) that @CheiaKeeta followed.
12 questions for @TheDailyBeast regarding @JakeLahut's false April 2023 story, "How Ron DeSantis Is Taking a Page Out of Nixon’s Playbook", which (among other things) falsely portrays an AI-generated face as a "sexually graphic meme" of a real child.
@JoannaColes @TracyConnor
First, some background and a couple debunks of the false article, for those unfamiliar with the situation:
1. How did the decision to use serial fabulist Steven Jarvis as a source for this article come about?
2. Was anyone employed by or affiliated with The Daily Beast at the time the article was published aware of Steven Jarvis's extensive history of making false claims?
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