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
cc: @ZellaQuixote
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.
We've seen a group of accounts spamming about "accelerationism" before:
https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1450970919694966793. 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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