What do Michigan GOP congressional candidate @Seely4Congress and New Hampshire GOP state senate candidate @LougNH have in common? Both were recently followed by swarms of recently-created accounts with random-looking names. #KeepOnAstroturfin

cc: @ZellaQuixote
The recently-created accounts that followed the two GOP candidates en masse are part of an astroturf botnet consisting of (at least) 25762 accounts created in June and July 2022 with display names consisting of random lowercase letters.
Here are follow order by creation date plots for @Seely4Congress and @LougNH. The followers from the botnet show up as horizontal streaks (highlighted in red).
The accounts in this botnet have repetitive biographies, with each biography appearing on dozens of accounts in the network. We've seen previous botnets with random lowercase names and repetitive biographies that may be predecessors to this network:
Unlike previous incarnations of this network, the accounts in this botnet don't just follow and like, they also tweet. All tweets thus far were (allegedly) posted via the Twitter Web App, and the content is a mix of retweets and replies.
Who do the accounts in this botnet retweet and reply to? Mostly cryptocurrency/NFT accounts. The replies are repetitive, with many duplicated verbatim by dozens of accounts.
Here are the numeric IDs of the accounts in this network, for those who are interested:
pastebin.com/A7ZsVuqB
pastebin.com/iNF3v8d2
Update: 25661 of the 25762 accounts in this network (99.6%) have been suspended.

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More from @conspirator0

Jul 8
Meet @JonasMattheww (permanent ID 2494218428) an account with a GAN-generated face spamming #ImpeachBiden tweets (one of which got over 500 RTs).

(GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used by thispersondoesnotexist.com to generate fake faces)

cc: @ZellaQuixote collage of 11 tweets containing #ImpeachBiden posted by @Jon
How do we know that @JonasMattheww's profile image is GAN-generated? There are several signs, such as nonsensical clothing that melts into the neck and background. screenshot of @JonasMattheww's profilecloseup of @JonasMattheww's profile image, a GAN-generated &
GAN-generated faces (at least the commonly-available ones) have the telltale trait that the primary facial features (especially eyes) are in the same location on each image. This becomes obvious when multiple GAN-generated faces are blended together.
Read 8 tweets
Jul 7
What do these nine cryptocurrency/NFT accounts have in common? Several things: all were created in 2010, all have been renamed at least once, and all appear to have gained their followers from the same illegitimate sources.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
These nine accounts were all created between April and August 2010. A few of the accounts tweeted via a variety of apps back in 2010, but all of them fell silent for over a decade until they woke up in 2022 tweeting about NFT/crypto stuff via the Twitter Web App.
All nine of these recently-awakened crypto accounts were renamed sometime between May 2020 and the present day. (The source for the previous names is a dataset of older account profiles we downloaded in spring 2020, discussed here: .)
Read 7 tweets
Jul 5
Meet @ItsJustMeRED and @JordanFun2, a pair of MAGA accounts with plagiarized profile photos who celebrated the 4th of July by tweeting additional plagiarized photos.

cc: @ZellaQuixote collage of image tweets from @ItsJustMeRED and @JordanFun2 a
These accounts are part of a network of eight MAGA accounts that retweet, reply to, quote tweet, and follow each other. Most have stolen profile photos (although @imp1ss3d0ff appears to be a cropped GAN-generated face). As we'll see, they also frequently tweet plagiarized photos. table listing the 8 accounts in the network: @imp1ss3d0ff, @collage of the 8 accounts' profile imagesnetwork diagram showing that each account in the network ret
All of the accounts in this network with the exception of @goldisez profusely post plagiarized photographs of random women, often falsely implying that the image depicts the operator of one of the accounts. Many of these photos are duplicated by multiple accounts in the network. collage of tweets containing a photo posted by multiple accocollage of tweets containing a photo posted by multiple accocollage of tweets containing a photo posted by multiple accocollage of tweets containing a photo posted by multiple acco
Read 8 tweets
Jun 30
When you're a bogus Twitter account named @APPLE01903644 pretending to have participated in protests in Washington DC, sometimes you screw up and post a stolen photo from a protest in an entirely different city, such as Boston. It's what you do.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
In a not-so-surprising development, @APPLE01903644's profile pic is stolen, as are a few of the "good morning"/"good evening" photos the account has posted.
The @APPLE01903644 account has repeatedly posted pet photos (both cats and dogs), but as with the account's profile photo, these photos are stolen.
Read 15 tweets
Jun 27
Meet @na_intel, an account with a GAN-generated face that provides "open source intelligence" about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which apparently involves plagiarizing photos from official Ukrainian military Facebook pages.

cc: @ZellaQuixote Image
(GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used by sites like thispersondoesnotexist.com and generated.photos to generate fake faces)
How can we tell that @na_intel's profile pic is GAN-generated? In this case, it's extremely easy, because the same "face" can be found on the website generated.photos, which maintains a curated collection of synthetically generated face images. Image
Read 6 tweets
Jun 23
Meet @AmberFo65785343, @BrendaB20110794, @Michell66473333, and @SarahKi73863172, a quartet of accounts with differently rotated versions of the same GAN-generated face.

(GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used by thispersondoesnotexist.com)

cc: @ZellaQuixote
These four accounts are part of a much larger retweet botnet consisting of 63096 accounts created from January to May 2022. All of them (allegedly) post all their tweets via the Twitter Web App, and 100% of their content to date is retweets.
What do the accounts in this botnet retweet? Mostly cryptocurrency/NFT content, but recently defeated Colombian presidential candidate @ingrodolfohdez turns up prominently as well. The tweets retweeted by the botnet tend to wind up with far more retweets than likes.
Read 7 tweets

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