Thread by @realShawnEib

In conjunction with @SlickRockWeb, now let’s take a look at #WalkAway from a different perspective. Who’s the man behind the curtain, and who’s backing him? His name is Brandon Straka, know here as @UsMinority. Let’s get to know him a bit. #infosec #osint #psyops

https://twitter.com/slickrockweb/status/1014761715735638016

Before #WalkAway took off (with surprising rapidity), Straka was a performance artist and stylist in New York. His most recent work appears to have been this show, showing his evolution away from #TheResistance. Here’s a link to the GoFundMe gofundme.com/resist-a-rock-…

His first announcement of the #WalkAway campaign was on May 26th. However, shortly after the dates of his show, on a Facebook post dated 10/27/17, we see the following exchange after a post about @TheEllenShow, which appears to be the first public use of the “walk away” idea.

So did that comment spark the idea for a movement? Maybe. After an attempt to start a club for homosexual conservatives, he comes out with the slick introduction video of #WalkAway, approx 7 months to the day after this Facebook exchange.

Here he is appearing on @RT_com, the Russian news agency widely known as a Kremlin mouthpiece. The account in the screenshot, @CarolN33, we have analyzed as being “Hamilton-like”, but do not have sufficient data to say they are definitely a #Hamilton68 acct.

@ CarollN33 definitely likes #WalkAway. Below is another screen shot of one her posts, this time linking to a new #WalkAway website. If she decided to switch sides, she appears to have done it before the 2016 election based on the accounts timeline.

As @SlickRockWeb noted, the first use of the hashtag by a Hamilton bot appears to be from @KeepTexasRed7 on June 8th. Let’s look at some numbers for this #IndependanceDay, and where those number are coming from. In a one minute time frame, the hashtag was used at least 100 times.

Look at those reach and impression numbers, and retweets. Below is a breakdown of retweets and original content percentages, and a hashtag and word cloud to show the terms being used most frequently by those pushing the #WalkAway concept:

Now many will probably jump on here to say that this is a strictly American movement not receiving any foreign amplification. Take a look:

While the UK and Australia may have enough American ex-pats to account for their appearance, that big ole splash of green across #Russia is pretty interesting. Not ENTIRELY home grown, hmm?

One example of these obvious non-organic messaging is shown here: this account has relatively few followers, and as you can see, stopped tweeting in 2014, and popped back up just in time to support #WalkAway. Most of his tweets get a max of 2-3 retweets. Mentions #WalkAway, 7000.

Next we’ll be digging into the movements supporters, bank rollers, and affiliations, and identifying the main influencers and drivers behind it. Thanks as always to @SlickRockWeb for the help. #infosec #botnet #CyberSecurity

I wish you all well on our #IndependanceDay, and implore all Americans to research everything: #WalkAwayFromMisinformation Happy Fourth of July.

Here is the start of @SlickRockWeb’s thread on this, all of which is definitely worth the read:

https://twitter.com/slickrockweb/status/1013693038210768896?s=21