Answer: the tweets in question were amplified by a spam network consisting of (at least) 3586 accounts created between October 2013 and December 2022. The accounts have Turkish display names that rarely match their @-handles.
All of this network's recent tweets are retweets, and all of these retweets were tweeted via Twitter for Android. (Some accounts have older tweets sent with other apps; as we'll see, these accounts were likely hijacked and the old tweets are probably from the original owners.)
Who does this spam network retweet? As has been the case with a lot of spam networks over the last couple years, it mostly amplifies cryptocurrency/NFT accounts, although various other promotional accounts show up too, as well as @BBhuttoZardari, the Foreign Minister of Pakistan.
As mentioned earlier, the display names and @-handles of these accounts mostly don't match. This is because the display names have been changed, as revealed by Wayback Machine archives of their older tweets. A likely explanation: the accounts have been hijacked.
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Despite recent rumors that all the spammy Twitter bots have been banished to a spamtastic afterlife, one only has to look at the followers of the aptly-named @TBotFightClub to find evidence that fake follower botnets continue to flourish on Twitter 2.0.
The first 83000 or so of @TBotFightClub's followers are all empty accounts (no tweets, no likes) created in either November or December 2022. By recursively exploring the followers of the other accounts these fake followers follow, we can map out the fake follower network.
This fake follower network consists of (at least) 925655 accounts created in November/ December 2022 (including some created after Elon Musk's recent bot cemetery tweet). All of these accounts follow a similar number of accounts and have zero tweets and zero likes.
A rogue's gallery of dishonest influencers have spent the last couple hours attempting to smear former Twitter Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth as a pedophile via old out-of-context tweets.
Predictably, the far-right hate mob is now spamming Roth with death threats.
It's the same tactic that LibsOfTikTok has used to direct hate swarms at hospitals and educators, but directed at a former Twitter employee and amplified by current Twitter leadership.
Update: @TwitterSafety appears to no longer be removing death threats. The man being targeted here been forced to flee his home (cnn.com/2022/12/12/tec…). Choosing to leave these threats online is a sociopathic and evil decision.
Here's a look at a smallish astroturf network targeting @SafeguardDefend (a non-profit group that has released multiple reports on human rights abuses in China) with spammy duplicate tweets. #SaturdaySpam
This network consists of 25 Twitter accounts created in multiple batches in September and October 2022. Thus far, all their tweets were tweeted via the Twitter Web App, and they generally go silent for two days a week (Friday and Saturday in US Pacific Time).
The content tweeted by this network is repetitive, with many tweets duplicated verbatim numerous times across multiple accounts. The most frequently repeated tweets all begin with the hashtag #SafeguardDefenders, and are all attacks on the Safeguard Defenders group.
Meet @patfkauffman, a "TRUMP 2024!" account motivated by freedom and hard work with over 44 thousand followers. Although this account may at first glance appear authentic, there are multiple problems.
First, @patfkauffman's profile pic is a GAN-generated face. The image has been cropped, preventing it from being detected by facial feature position, but other anomalies remain, such an incorrectly shaped ear and weird artifacts where the hair, skin, and clothing meet.
(More on GAN-generated faces and their use on Twitter and elsewhere here:
As it turns out, the @milanvanacker22 account is one of a set of a dozen cryptocurrency/NFT promoter accounts currently up for sale for impressive prices. The total sale price of all twelve accounts is almost $30,000. #ExtremelyBoringWaysToWasteMoney
These twelve "NFT promoter" accounts (along with a few others) are being sold by a group of four users on accs-market(dot)com: "NFT Promoter", "xGo Agency", "Mark crypto", and the rather boringly-named "accounts".
Unsurprisingly, several (and possibly all) of these accounts have been renamed:
It's a Sunday, and some chucklehead has decided to bestow ~24,000 newly-created fake followers on my account. All are accounts created in November 2022 with 0 tweets, a default profile image, or both.
In a possibly related development, this recent tweet linking a Substack post about detecting fake followers has been spammed with likes from random NFT accounts:
Roughly 40% of my unwanted fake followers also follow @bi3followers1 (ID 1298538907945050112), an account that sells "social media services" and appears to have almost no real followers. This account (which likely violates Twitter's spam policy) has an $8 Twitter Blue checkmark.