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Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
@conspirator0
May 4, 2022 • 8 tweets • 7 min read • Read on X
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What's up with these three identical tweets about accelerationism and "the decline of the United States", and how did they each end up getting dozens of retweets but zero likes? #Astroturfing

cc: @ZellaQuixote collage of three identical tweets containing the text "
The tweets in question are from a spam network consisting of 60 accounts that post repetitive tweets containing the hashtag #accelerationism in both English and Chinese. All but two of these accounts were created in 2021 or 2022, and all tweet exclusively via the Twitter Web App. table of the 60 accounts spamming the #accelerationism hashtTable of the 20 most frequently repeated tweets, most of whitweet volume by source bar chart, showing that the 60 accoun
We've seen a group of accounts spamming about "accelerationism" before: . Five of the accounts mentioned in the previous thread are also part of the current group: @Heather65895763, @KarlaDeng3, @KattieWhalen8, @LyndsayLagerst1, and @Tatiana74606219.
The spammy tweets are a mix of political tweets containing the #accelerationism hashtag and tweets about the game "Need For Speed". 145 of these tweets received dozens of retweets but zero likes. What's going on? collage of #accelerationism tweets that received dozens of r
Things get more interesting when we look at the accounts that retweeted the spammy tweets. They mostly have Arabic profiles, and many of them retweet an account called @smm_mohd, which is associated with a dodgy website that sells fake social media interactions, smm-mohd(dot)com. screenshot of a list of accounts with Arabic profiles that rscreenshots of the profiles of three of the accounts that rescreenshots of @smm_mohd's profile and pinned tweet with Engscreenshot of the website in question, smm-mohd(dot)com, sho
By exploring the retweets of the #accelerationism spam tweet that received dozens of retweets but no likes, we found 4452 part of the astroturf network of Twitter accounts used by ssm-mohd(dot)com to bestow bogus followers and retweets on its customers. Most have Arabic profiles. histogram of account creation dates for the 4452 accounts intable of example accounts from the astroturf network, most o
Although some of the accounts in this astroturf network have been around for a long time, they were relatively inactive prior to mid-2021. Almost all of their recent tweets are retweets, and almost all were retweeted (allegedly) via the Twitter Web App. tweet volume by tweet type chart for the astroturf network, tweet volume by source app chart for the astroturf network, tweet volume by source app chart for the astroturf network,
Most of the content retweeted by the network is cryptocurrency/blockchain/NFT-related (although one of the accounts amplified (@Promotesocialm1) is yet another seller of shady social media services. table of the accounts most frequently retweeted by the astro

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More from @conspirator0

Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Jan 24
As Bluesky approaches 30 million users, people who run spam-for-hire operations are taking note. Here's a look at a network of fake Bluesky accounts associated with a spam operation that provides fake followers for multiple platforms.

cc: @ZellaQuixote screenshots of 12 Bluesky accounts with the biography "Praticante de esportes radicais"
This fake follower network consists of 8070 Bluesky accounts created between Nov 30 and Dec 30, 2024. None has posted, although some have reposted here and there. Almost all of their biographies are in Portuguese, with the exception of a few whose biographies only contain emoji. hourly creation volume chart for the 8070 accounts in the spam network
table of 30 example spam accounts
The accounts in this fake follower network use a variety of repeated or otherwise formulaic biographies, some of which are repeated dozens or hundred of times. Some of the biographies begin with unnecessary leading commas, and a few consist entirely of punctuation. table of biographies most frequently used by the network
screenshots of six accounts with malformed biographies
Read 8 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Jan 10
It's presently unclear why, but over the past year someone has created a network of fake Facebook accounts pretending to be employees of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Many of the accounts in this network have GAN-generated faces.

cc: @ZellaQuixote Screenshots of the profiles of 12 fake LA Dodger employee Facebook accounts
This network consists of (at least) 80 Facebook accounts, 48 of which use StyleGAN-generated faces as profile images. The remaining 32 all use the same image, a real photograph of a random person sitting in an office. collage of 48 GAN-generated faces used as profile images by the fake accounts
collage of 32 identical photos used as profile images by the fake accounts
As is the case with all unmodified StyleGAN-generated faces, the main facial features (especially the eyes) are in the same position on all 48 AI-generated faces used by the network. This anomaly becomes obvious when the faces are blended together.
Read 6 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Oct 18, 2024
None of these chefs exist, as they're all AI-generated images. This hasn't stopped them from racking up lots of engagement on Facebook by posting AI-generated images of food (and occasional thoughts and prayers), however.

cc: @ZellaQuixote collage of 11 AI-generated images of chefs, presently being used as the avatars of Facebook accounts
These "chefs" are part of a network of 18 Facebook pages with names like "Cook Fastly" and "Emily Recipes" that continually post AI-generated images of food. While many of these pages claim to be US-based, they are have admins in Morocco per Facebook's Page Transparency feature. collage of the profiles of 18 Facebook "chef" pages that post AI-generated images of food
screenshots of Facebook page transparency info showing that the pages are run from Morocco
Between them, these 18 Facebook "chef" pages have posted AI-generated images of food at least 36,000 times in the last five months. Not all of the images are unique; many have been posted repeatedly, sometimes by more than one of the alleged chefs. examples of AI-generated food images posted by the Facebook spam pages
examples of AI-generated food images posted by more than one Facebook spam page
Read 7 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Sep 8, 2024
Can simple text generation bots keep sophisticated LLM chatbots like ChatGPT engaged indefinitely? The answer is yes, which has some potentially interesting implications for distinguishing between conversational chatbots and humans.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
conspirator0.substack.com/p/baiting-the-…
screenshot of Substack post
For this experiment, four simple chatbots were created:

• a bot that asks the same question over and over
• a bot that replies with random fragments of a work of fiction
• a bot that asks randomly generated questions
• a bot that repeatedly asks "what do you mean by <X>?"
The output of these chatbots was used as input to an LLM chatbot based on the 8B version of the Llama 3.1 model. Three of the four bots were successful at engaging the LLM chatbot in a 1000-message exchange; the only one that failed was the repetitive question bot.


screenshots of portions of the conversation between the repetitive cheeseburger bot and the LLM bot
screenshots of portions of the conversation between the Star Trek bot and the LLM bot
screenshots of portions of the conversation between the random question bot and the LLM bot
screenshots of portions of the conversation between the "what do you mean" bot and the LLM bot
Read 5 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Sep 3, 2024
The spammers behind the "Barndominium Gallery" Facebook page have branched out into AI-generated video and started a YouTube channel with the catchy name "AY CUSTOM HOME". The results are just about as craptastic as you'd expect.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
screenshot of the AY CUSTOM HOME Youtube channel
In this synthetically generated aerial video of a (nonexistent) barndominium under construction, the geometry of the roof changes, a blue building appears, and a tree vanishes, all in the course of just three seconds. still images from two different points in an AY CUSTOM HOME YouTube video, showing multiple impossible changes over the course of a few seconds
This AI-generated barndominium features a long AI-generated porch with some chairs on it. Exactly how many chairs there are depends on what angle you look at it from, however, as the chair on the left splits into three chairs as the camera pans. still images from two different points in an AY CUSTOM HOME YouTube video, showing multiple impossible changes over the course of a few seconds
Read 4 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Aug 28, 2024
Some observations regarding @Botted_Likes (permanent ID 1459592225952649221)...

First, "viral posts which don't result in follower growth and have very little engagement in the reply section" is not a useful heuristic for detecting botted likes. Why not?

cc: @ZellaQuixote screenshot of @Botted_Likes's profile with the text "THIS IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE METHOD OF DETECTING POSTS WITH BOTTED LIKES" overlaid in Comic Sans
"Viral posts that do not result in follower growth" is not a valid test for botting, because posts from large accounts often go viral among the large account's existing followers but do not reach other audiences, resulting in high like/repost counts but little/no follower growth.
"Very little engagement in the reply section" doesn't work for multiple reasons (some topics spur debate and some don't, some people restrict replies, etc)

Hilariously, @Botted_Likes seems to be ignoring their own criteria, as many of the posts they feature have tons of replies. screenshots of six @Botted_Likes posts featuring screenshots of posts that allegedly have botted likes
Read 5 tweets

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