10k tweets, from just over 2k users. Average: 4.9 tweets / user.
In spontaneous traffic, the average is usually below 2.2. Higher usually shows bots or coordinated action.
Here's why. The ten most active accounts contributed 2,247 tweets. Almost a quarter of the total sample.
Oh, and 11,534 hashtags.
Almost 75% of the posts were retweets.
That's close to the upper edge of the normal range you'd see for spontaneous traffic, but not wildly off the scale.
This one's pretty overt. 665,000 posts since January 2016, or an average of 700+ a day.
Also tweets authored posts, though.
This one seems to like his hashtags.
Over 9,000 in the past week.
The 50 most active accounts together posted 3,679 tweets.
Over 1/3 of the traffic.
Again, characteristic of coordinated posting, not spontaneous traffic.
This looks like a mix of bots, high-activity human (or semi-automated) users, and human users, generating online volume through a high average number of posts per user.
Attempts to game the trending algorithm often look like this.
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Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
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#OPCW hacking case: we've already had the Russian government trying to dismiss the latest UK / NL claims about the #GRU. That's tactic number 1.
Up next, expect attempts to distort, distract and dismay.
Distort. We saw this with the Skripal suspects, portrayed as "civilians" and snow-shy tourists.
Expect attempts to say that the photos were faked, the evidence was made up, and / or the men were harmless visitors on a diplomatic visit to fix the Embassy wifi.
Distract. Accuse the accusers.
Expect the arguments, "The West hacks people too," or "You killed civilians in Libya / Afghanistan / Vietnam / insert name here."
Which doesn't justify use of CW on civilians, or attempts to cover it up.
Looks like someone tried to get hashtag SkripalHoax to trend overnight.
822 mentions. It really didn't do very well.
Let's look at some of the arguments.
Probably the most popular in the pro-Kremlin crowd was the claim that the Met Police photos of the arrival in Gatwick had the same timestamp, and therefore must have been photoshopped.
... unless there's more than one arrival channel at Gatwick, and they were walking together.