Thread by @marcowenjones

🧵1. This is an analysis of 30,000 tweets spreading disinformation about the #TurkeySyriaEarthquake . The #disinformation in question is the false story that 8-10 Western countries withdrew their ambassadors before the earthquake. The analysis indicates manipulation

2/ Dozens of identical tweets (see vid) were shared and retweeted thousands of times. They took aim at Canada, USA, Britain, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Holland and France. Not quite sure what the reason for this selection was. It may relate to the fact at least some of those

3/ countries had envoys summoned by Turkey after they temporarily shut embassies & issued security warnings following Koran-burnings in Europe. Anyway this was days before the Earthquake. The countries are in NATO, and all contribute a lot of assistance to Ukraine

4/ Not sure if that's relevant, as the list doesn't seem to have an explanation. The conspiracy in question is that these countries knew that HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program )was weaponized to create the earthquake. HAARP was a former US program designed to

5/ investigate the ionosphere. Many sharing the conspiracy have also been saying that it was a way of NATO punishing Turkey for hindering Finland's and Sweden's membership. So the HAARP conspiracy, & this ambassador one, seems explicitly anti-NATO and implicitly pro-Russia

6/ So who are the influencers. It's a who's who of strangelove. There's @DavidWolfe, a sort of new-age superfood, @AntonioTweets2 an anti-Trudeau account, @iluminatibot an, erm, Illuminati bot, and @crankycrab1171, an Australian, presumably with crabs that's making them cranky

7/ They have thousands of retweets of their disinformation and they are all serial disinfo enthusiasts (disinfluencers). The most cohesive community of people retweeting them are MAGA, pro-Trump accounts. After, 'love' 'God' and 'truth', 'MAGA' was the most common word in bios

8/ A very interesting aspect. Of those promoting the conspiracy, there are some anomalies. In April and October 2022 a disproportionately large number of accounts were created in a short space of time, almost a thousand accounts in a 6 days span, way above average. #disinfo 8

9/ Indeed, around 8-9% of all accounts created between 2006 and 2023 were created in just two months, April and October 2022. Most of them appears to be - again, right-wing MAGA accounts with generic profile descriptions. Patriots, god etc.

10/ The fact such a spike of accounts was created on those dates is suspect, and points to potential manipulation. Will try do more digging. Either way, it continues to be obscene how many people exploit grief and tragedy to grift conspiracies based on no evidence. - ttfn

11/ Just wanted to add a bit of detail about the network graph to show what the different clusters mean. It's oddly symmetrical.

12/ As you can see the story is proliferating on @facebook too. All these screenshots of the conspiracy....