Thread by @antibot4navalny

🧵 For Trump's admin, influencing its citizens with a bot network seems becoming an ordinary routine.

Today's US is one of the first G7 powers that uses bots domestically outside of an election cycle—what for a long time used to be exclusive to authoritarian states.

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A bot network benefiting Trump; ex-DOGE Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy is running in a likely collusion with an entity affiliated to Musk and/or Trump admin.

It attacks their critics, praises Trump's policies and appointees, targets swing states, affects Ukraine interests.

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Trump's personal "enemies" attacked by the bots:

⚔️ Judge Merchan (hush money conviction)
⚔️ @RepLizCheney (J6 Committee)
⚔️ @ABC and George Stephanopoulos ("Trump 'raped' a woman" claim)
⚔️ Rachel @Maddow (coverage of 100 days)
⚔️ Chris Wray (raid on Trump's home)

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Similarly, bots attacked:

⚔️ @Ilhan Omar and @AOC
(both criticized Elon MUSK and his DOGE for dismantling USAID, unlawful disruption of other national agencies)

⚔️ @TheLeoTerrell
(who was consistently calling RAMASWAMY an opportunist and a threat to the MAGA movement)

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Bots were blaming CA governor @GavinNewsom and LA mayor @KarenBassLA for poor response to the Los Angeles wildfire crisis in January 2025.

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Bots targeted ~20 Dem representatives who loudly criticized banning transgender athletes from women sports.

Many of those Dems belong to the Congressional @EqualityCaucus that denounced the ban, saying it is trying to distract the public to hide Trump govt’s corruption.

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Bots fiercely supported defunding Planned Parenthood—a populistic promise of the One Big Beautiful Bill (which most benefited to the rich, while generously increasing funding of ICE).

Inclusion of Defunding @PPFA could be a way for the narrow passage of OBBB through Congress

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Most of the Trump's appointees that bots praised are widely criticized for loyalty over qualification, unfit for their roles:

💼 Pete Hegset, Defense
💼 Kash Patel, FBI
👜 Karoline Leavitt, Press Secretary
👜 Kristi Noem, Homeland Security
💼 RFK Jr., Public Health

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Swing states:

🌰 OHIO
Bots advocated against iGaming bill (possibly as a favor for @GovMikeDeWine🟩); praised Frank LaRose🟪.

Both are members of the state's Redistricting Commission, a key to gerrymandering in favor of GOP.

Ramaswamy is running for Ohio governor.

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Swing states:

🦡 WISCONSIN
Bots interfered into elections of state's supreme court judge, largely in sync with a campaign generously funded by Elon Musk.

🌵 ARIZONA
Bots aimed at increasing the GOP turnout during presidential elections; later thanked for electing Trump.

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Trump's policies praised by the bots closely echo the 2024 GOP Platform:

📜 release Epstein files
📜 lower drug prices
📜 stronger borders / deport criminal immigrants
📜 defund sanctuary cities
📜 economic policy / inflation / tariffs

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Needless to say that bots were astroturfing around the key milestones of Trump's 2nd term:

👑 presidential election (incl smearing Kamala Harris) and its outcome
👑 inauguration
👑 upcoming 100 days

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Likewise, the network praised developments that could benefit to Elon Musk much more than to Trump:

🫅🏻 adoption of Community Notes from X by Facebook, Instagram (following the dismantling of their fact-checking programs)

🫅🏻 DOGE cutting govt waste spending

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The network impacted Ukraine:

🇺🇦 portrayed Trump as anti-war🕊️ and Harris as pro-war🪖 candidates; encouraging swing voters to stay home

🇺🇦 in response to mentions of Ukraine, was downplaying Ukraine's critical support, diverting focus to domestic issues, eg LA wildfires

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We reconstructed the above list of opponents, appointees and policies based on nearly 85% of bot replies, categorized unambiguously into 28+ distinct, clearly defined narratives.

Most likely there were no other narratives from the network within the scope that we analyzed.

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Totaling at least 1360 fake accounts, the network is powered by LLM and runs under a day-to-day human oversight for over 10 months now.

Its 123K replies gained 4.7M views overall; nearly every second reply on the average was liked or replied to.

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What makes them an inauthentic network?

🧩 ~80% accounts created on Sep..Oct 2024
🧩 25% replies posted at rate >200 wpm, impossible for a human typist
🧩 each bot waits ≥10s, typically 12s between its tweets
🧩 if 2 bots replied to the same tweet, a typical interval is 10s

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We started studying these bots in late Apr-2025, thanks to their anti-Ukraine narratives.

Our contribution to exposing this network includes:

🤲 attribution
🤲 full set of narratives, most w/background and a trigger event
🤲 archiving every piece of evidence
🤲 and more

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We will be likely covering more aspects of this network in separate thread(s), followed by a detailed technical report and a tool helping ordinary users to limit its impact.

What would you most like to hear about?

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MEDIA COVERAGE

We are most grateful to @MoharChat, @MagMill95 and their editors for covering our research for @Politico's @DigitalFuture newsletter, and to @ETBrooking for an independent assessment of our findings:

politico.com/newsletters/di…

@MoharChat @magmill95 @politico @DigitalFuture @etbrooking 21/
CREDITS:

We partnered for this research with @SourcesOuvertes, an OSINT researcher.

The network was first reported by @ClemsonHub and @AletheaInsights (), as covered by @KevinCollier for @NBCnewsalethea.com/insights/promp…