Thread by @conspirator0

Everything is Bottier in Texas

We've looked into social media activity related to secession movements before, primarily #Calexit (btw, #CalexitIsStillAKremlinConJob). Let's divert our attention to the Lone Star state and check out automated Twitter traffic around #Texit for a change of pace.

Repeated tweets are one distinct sign of automation, and a Twitter search for #Texit doesn't disappoint. Refining the search to "Good morning GregAbbott_TX. We're ready for a vote on #Texit." reveals a pair of accounts (@JohnDuBose6 and @RCC_JDGIV) that tweet this text every day.

Here are the tweet schedules for @JohnDuBose6 and @RCC_JDGIV. @JohnDuBose6 tweets nothing other than the #Texit tweet at the same time every day, while @RCC_JDGIV occasionally throws other tweets into the mix. Both accounts use IFTTT to post their tweets.

Let's widen the net and see if we can find more bots tweeting about #Texit. One way to do this is to search for various phrases used in #Texit tweets as well as #Texit tweets with links to services such as IFTTT, and then check the accounts for signs of automation

Testing the results for accounts that tweet 24/7, post 90% or more of their tweets via an automation service, or both yields 216 probable bots with #Texit tweets. There are probably more; the set of searches used was not comprehensive and the search results only go back 10 days.

Thanks to @ZellaQuixote for research/targeting assistance with this thread.

Performing a similar set of searches for #Calexit and testing for accounts that tweet round-the-clock and/or post 90+% of their tweets using automation services yields 532 automated accounts. Is there overlap between this set and the #Texit bots?

The answer is yes. There are 63 accounts in both the #Texit and #Calexit bot sets. (Probably more - again, these searches are unlikely to find every automated account that used the terms in question.)

How much volume do these bots produce? Based on the recent tweets from each account:

#Texit bots: 63305 tweets per day
#Calexit bots: 123399 tweets per day
Overall: 180045 tweets per day (number is lower than the sum because some accounts are in both sets)