What's up with these newly-created accounts with identical Bart Simpson avatars retweeting cryptocurrency tweets? #FridaySpam

cc: @ZellaQuixote
The self-similar Bart Simpson accounts are part of a retweet botnet consisting of 259 accounts created in May 2022. Most of the accounts have Turkish names, and many of their profile images are duplicates.
These accounts post almost all of their tweets via a variety of custom automation apps (4643/4644 tweets, 99.9%). The accounts use a total of 10 different custom apps, with each app being used by between 12 and 41 accounts.
This botnet's content is almost all retweets of cryptocurrency/NFT content. Every account in the network has retweeted @btc_magazin at least once.

The sole reply posted by the botnet (and only tweet from the network not posted with a custom app) is to @TradeWars_10.
The accounts in the botnet all follow many large cryptocurrency accounts (mostly the same accounts they retweet). Every one of the 259 accounts in the botnet follows both @btc_magazin and @TradeWars_10.

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More from @conspirator0

May 25
Here's an odd account: @Freelancers_P44, which has a couple of tweets indicating that the account operator is or was selling Twitter followers. Interestingly, almost all of @Freelancers_P44's 46,000 followers were created in the latter half of 2016.

Cc: @ZellaQuixote
The mass-created accounts following @Freelancers_P44 are part of a network of 116402 accounts created from May to December 2016. All of these accounts follow dozens or hundreds of accounts but have few or no followers themselves. They mostly follow large Arabic-language accounts.
Interestingly, eight of the accounts followed by the spam network have names that start with "Freelancers" or "ProBlogTech": @Freelancers_P40, @Freelancers_P42, @Freelancers_P44, @ProBlogTecH, @ProBlogTecH7, @ProBlogTech10, @ProBlogTech17, and @ProBlogTech5.
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May 20
It will probably come as a surprise to absolutely no one that the official Twitter account of the Church of @Scientology got an infusion of fake followers early in its existence.

cc: @ZellaQuixote screenshot of @Scientology's Twitter profilefollow order by creation date plot of @Scientology's followetable of example fake account names, follower/tweet/like cou
These fake followers are part of an astroturf network consisting of (at least) 3932 accounts created in batches in 2011 and 2012. None of the accounts has tweeted since 2015. creation date histogram for the 3932 accounts in the networkdaily tweet volume chart, showing that the most recent tweet
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Surely an account such as @Route_Crypto (ID 134233008) that confidently links a TwitterAudit follower analysis in its profile as "proof of authenticity" gained all of its 19K followers organically, right? (Spoiler: Nope, not even close.)

cc: @ZellaQuixote
Many of @Route_Crypto's followers have used one or more of the Round Year Fun apps ("My Twitter Family", "My Twitter Crush", etc). These apps force their users to follow the customers of shady follower sales website realactivefollowers(dot)com, which likely include @Route_Crypto.
Here's a thread with more information on the Round Year Fun apps (including how to remove their ability to affect your Twitter account if you've used them) and the associated follower sales website, realactivefollowers(dot)com:
Read 11 tweets
May 10
Here’s a look at the 25 Substack blogs most frequently shared on Twitter recently (April 26-May 5 2020). 12 of them contain an abundance of antivax content/COVID misinfo. 3 of the authors are banned from Twitter: Alex Berenson, Steve Kirsch, and Robert Malone.

cc: @ZellaQuixote table of the top 25 substac...
In addition to tweets linking the 25 Substack blogs, we also gathered the public comments on the 25 Substack blogs within the date range studied (April 26th through May 5th, 2022). All but two of the blogs received hundreds or thousands of comments during this period. table of the 25 substacks, ...
Here's a network diagram of the comments on the 25 Substack blogs. The major antivax/COVID disinfo Substacks are densely clustered, indicating that many of the same people/accounts are commenting on them. The other popular Substacks show significantly less overlap in audience. network visualization of co...
Read 6 tweets
May 4
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
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Read 8 tweets
Apr 29
Do you want to make the onions cry one day? There's a botnet for that, and it's following a bunch of cryptocurrency accounts.

cc: @ZellaQuixote collage of account profiles for @ErnestoGilmore1, @LiamHo18,
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Read 10 tweets

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