1/ Earlier I tweeted about a new friend 'Rick O'Shay'. He tweeted me out of the blue to complain about my misuse of data science around #Ukraine#disinfo. Turns out of course he's a propagandist with a strange history that includes not even knowing how to spell his own name
2/ So Rick is handsome, even if a little generic looking. Could be AI generated, or a stolen photo? Hard to know actually. His generic bio is also alluring 'informed, educated, critical thinker'. Rick is obviously irresistible, and too chill to worry about having no banner photo
3/ He's not that active, 785 tweets in 6 years. But when he does tweet, he would rank as 🔥on troll Tinder. He ticks all the boxes. Anti-Clinton, Obama birth cert disinfo, covid disinfo, QAnon pizzagate fan. Russia Today fan. Probs loves travel too #disinformation#ukraine
4/ His tweets re Ukraine are all whataboutism, Western hypocrisy, or focusing on negative news about Zelensky. He initially described the invasion of #Ukraine as a 'mild incursion'. He also seems to talk a lot about Finland.... #disinformation
5/ What's odd, the Wayback machine reveals that this mild mannered Rick O Shay used to be called @1n_ur_F4c3, (thanks @Dragnet_News ) and had a V for Vendetta profile picture. Ok, some ppl change their handles, but what's weirder, he used to spell his surname O'Shea, not O'Shay
6/ Without this even stranger back story, Rick O Shay obviously does not appear plausible. The unusual photo, generic bio, and heady mix of pro-Russia, anti-vax and QAnon propaganda. #Ukraine
7 / Again, your daily reminder to be mindful of the many potential suspicious trolls out there who are promoting propaganda and trying to shape various narratives. Peace out Rick #UkraineRussiaWar
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🧵🚨1/ This verified X account posing as an American doctor has been spreading pro-Israel propaganda, justifying the killing of journalists, and posting predominantly anti–Sudanese Armed Forces content. The account is fake.>
#disinformation #gazagenocide #Sudan
2/ The first clear red flags are the tweets versus creation date ratio.
The account was created in 2009, but has only tweeted 1090 times, and the first of those was on April 2025. This means the account has been appropriated/hacked/bought and its old tweets scrubbed.
3/ I located the unique user id of the account. I ran this user id via the botometer archive of bots and it tells me that in February 2023 the account was called 'sitaramks', not 'nate_jone'
1/ Propaganda botnet alert! About 50 accounts, tweeting in English & Arabic, have pushed out thousands of posts about #Sudan’s war over the past few months. Almost all certainly using genAI, all pushing a pro-UAE, anti-SAF & anti Muslim (Brotherhood) narrative. #disinformation
2/ They all follow the same script:
> Blame Burhan, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood for Sudan’s suffering.
> Praise the UAE for “stability” and “humanitarian aid.”
> Wrap it all in moral language about peace, tolerance, and unity.
3/ Much of the phrasing is synthetic: with odd, weird idioms, and em dashes. Classic traces of Chat GPT or another LLM agent. The slogans repeat across accounts:
e.g. “Brotherhood’s Butler”, “Brotherhood in Uniform”, “Ministry of Brotherhood Enforcement”, "Sudan bleeds"
🤖 1/ Ok this is pretty wild. I saw some sus pro-Israel astroturfing activity on a BBCNews Facebook post about aid arriving in Gaza. Lots of Hasbara comments like "Hamas will take the aid". The following 2 identical posts were side by side so I looked into it. #disinformation
2/ Specifically I looked at Dean O' Connor. Firstly up, there were two almost identical Dean O'connor pages, both created on consecutive days last week (15 + 16 May). The one that posted is the one on the right.
3/ When I reverse image searched the picture I was inundated with dozens of pages from forums about romance scams asking about people using this same picture. A lot of people scammed out of thousands. Someone even asked on Quora about O'Connor!
Macron Cocaine Thread/ - The first 10 hours of the @EmmanuelMacron @Keir_Starmer @ZelenskyyUa Cocaine disinformation.
Seemed to be promoted initially by a few dubious accounts like @Veritiste @SitgesFranck @99percentyouth @SilentlySirs @goddeketal
#disinformation
2/ Before being boosted by the right-wing ecosystem and conspiracy accounts e.g. @DineshDSouza @RealAlexJones @CollinRugg. No serious journalists reported this story (because it's absurd). Nonetheless, those tweeting in the first 10 hours generated over 103 million views on X!
3/ The boosting of the info by Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev was via Alex Jones, who as the above timeline shows - wasn't the first to put it out on X - but the most widely viewed.
🚨1/ Fake News Alert: A number of accounts are spreading false information that a church in #Wales was burned down by two Pakistan migrants/muslims. There are other narratives, but this is the dominant one. It is false but has obtained millions of views. some data> #disinfo
2/ It is true that a church did burn down. It was set alight by two local teenagers. The South Wales police have tweeted that other rumours circulating are false - they are of course talking about the false info about the ethnicity of the attackers (right).
3/ The most shared claim comes from 'RadioEuropes'. This is a 'Dysinfluencer' account - an account that repeatedly spreads false and malicious information - in this case xenophobic and anti-Muslim content. You can see its false tweet garnered over 3.6 million views
1/ THREAD: On populist gaslighting and the war on truth-tellers 🧵
2/ Something concerning is happening in our information ecosystem: populists aren't just spreading misinfo, they're systematically trying to undermine the very concept of verifiable truth
3/ When fact-checkers or experts present evidence contradicting false claims, they get labeled as "elitist manipulators" or 'censors' - effectively inverting reality