None of these people exist, but that hasn't stopped them from spamming a variety of articles (mostly about cryptocurrency/NFT topics) onto Twitter using social media automation service Socialchief. #FridayShenaniGANs
These accounts are part of a network of 8 accounts created over the span of roughly 5 minutes on January 5th, 2022. All 8 use GAN-generated faces as profile pics.
(GAN = "generative adversarial network", the technology used by thispersondoesnotexist.com to produce synthetic faces)
The major facial features (particularly the eyes) on unmodified GAN-generated face pics (so far) are always in the same position on the image, regardless of the angle of the face. This becomes obvious when one blends the images together.
So far, the accounts in this network have posted the majority of their content (363 of 387 tweets, 93.7%) via the Socialchief automation app. Each account posts its automated tweets at the same time(s) every day, although the times differ from account to account.
The automated tweets (sent via Socialchief) from these accounts contain links to articles on a variety of websites, most frequently investorplace(dot)com. The relatively few "organic" tweets (sent via the Twitter Web App) are mostly replies about a game called Gunstar.
This is not the first time we've run across group accounts with GAN-generated profile pics that use Socialchief to share cryptocurrency content in an automated fashion:
This botnet consists of 52770 accounts created between March 29th and April 27th, 2022. None has ever tweeted or liked a tweet, and most have no followers of their own. Biographies are heavily repeated - the 52770 accounts have only 104 unique biographies.
This network also reuses profile images; the 52770 accounts have only 611 unique profile pics, many of them repeated across hundreds of accounts. 400 of the images are GAN-generated faces. (GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used by thispersondoesnotexist.com).
As many people have noticed, accounts popular on the right experienced accelerated follower growth after Monday's announcement of Elon Musk's Twitter purchase. Here's a comparison of recent followers of 12 prominent accounts before and after the announcement.
First, the followers are (probably) not bots. We found no evidence of widespread automation (or for that matter, astroturfing behaviors like coordinated retweeting that frequently get mistaken for bots). Twitter reached a similar conclusion:
When did the follower growth kick into high gear? Most (but not all) of the 12 influencers we looked at started gaining followers at a much faster rate starting around noon Pacific time on the day the Musk/Twitter deal was announced (April 25th, 2022).
This tweet is dishonest based on the first two words alone, never mind the rest of it. The vast, vast majority of people concerned about possible consequences of an Elon Musk Twitter purchase are ordinary users and not "corporate journalists" by any stretch of the imagination.
Another awful take from the contrarian clickbait club: this guy is proposing that Elon Musk force Twitter to place fraudulent labels on accounts.
The nonsense takes from people who want Musk to buy Twitter keep on rolling. Neither firing "basically every Twitter employee" nor addressing imaginary concerns like "censorship algorithms that cause followers to inadvertently be dropped" would make Twitter in any way better.
What do these six viral tweets have in common? They were all tweeted by accounts that are presently up for sale on a dodgy website called accs-market(dot)com. (Buying used social media accounts from random websites is, needless to say, unwise.)
These six accounts (along with four others, for a total of ten) are all being sold by the same accs-market(dot)com user (Thekingdon), for prices ranging from $300 to $9,000 ($23,100 total). The user in question has apparently already sold one account, for $5,000.
The ten for-sale accounts were created between 2020 and 2022. All have tens or hundreds of thousands of followers, but follow almost no accounts themselves. Seven of the group of ten for-sale accounts retweet other accounts in the group.
Twitter is taking steps to thwart a potential hostile takeover by Elon Musk, and right-wing propagandist Jack Posobiec is expressing his displeasure by retweeting a two-month old account with 26 followers and a GAN-generated face pic because of course he is. #AltWankers
GAN-generated face pics (such as the profile pic used by @JamesClayborn5, the account amplified by Jack Posobiec) have the fingerprint that the main facial features are in the same position on each image. This becomes obvious when one blends multiple GAN faces together.
Apparently in addition to the GAN-generated face, the @JamesClayborn5 account also has used at least one stolen photo. Impersonation is, of course, a violation of Twitter rules.
Here's an interesting account: @lubadovzhenko1 (created February 2021), allegedly a journalism student in Kyiv with poor English skills who never used their Twitter account prior to March 2022. There are, however, at least four problems.
First, @lubadovzhenko1 (permanent ID 1357665122395815940) wasn't always named @lubadovzhenko1. Prior to March 2022, this account was named @/camplostkids. The claim to have just started posting is false; they've simply deleted all tweets prior to 2022.
Second, the old content contradicts the claim in @lubadovzhenko1's profile about speaking "bad English", as the previous tweets (in contrast with the recent ones) are in relatively normal colloquial English and include correct usage of slang.