Thread by @josh_emerson

Going to try to tweet this as I work through it. Someone out there doesn't like facebook. At least 3-4 different freshly minted botnets are retweeting anything with the #DeleteFacebook hashtag.
#Bot #TwitterBots

the 1st "set" of bots is very similar to the elon musk cryptocurrency scammer bots that are running wild on twitter.
they are retweeting everything this account tweets:

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by @justinsuntron view original on Twitter

sample accounts:
@daryl01192920
@marissafurtner2
@drphbkvk
@cecila63646830
@adelaidaklock6
@chung48330869
@diannakwiatkow6
@rutha79379577
@kemberl39902675

there are about 3200 accounts in this "network" and it looks like a cryptocurrency pump and dump scam that maybe happened to RT the hashtag., not exactly sure yet.
All the accounts created in the last few days, all of them with the same stats:

That many accounts created in 3-4 days just proves one thing, twitter has no idea how to stop automatic account creation.
what the accounts mostly "look" like:

next up:
kinda a funny one, this company offered to delete it's facebook if it got 1000 RT's and someone unleashed a botnet on it:

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by @DrOetkerPizzaDE view original on Twitter

and they actually deleted it based on what they probably thought was organic interactions: never trust polls, petitions, or anything that can be gamed by bots online. they are all lies.

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by @DrOetkerPizzaDE view original on Twitter

330 accounts that I can see right now that did this.
Again all made within the last few days.
All the accounts have the same 'stats".

this one is really interesting because it got hit by a botnet of new accounts and one of old accounts that are VERY similar to some internet research agency account both me(i tagged em 1st 😀) buzzfeed found @flashboy @jamesrbuk buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/we…

data that looks like this is NOT a coincidence.
Organic twitter data will never look like this.
Accounts made in the same time frame doing the same thing, i need to look at the accounts more but there is something going on here:

next up about 139 fresh bot accounts retweeted this:

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by @GabrielleEstres view original on Twitter

and this:

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by @titohernandez02 view original on Twitter

all of them made over the last few days:
i would say probably these are all connected.

one of the tweets those accounts all RTed.
kinda hard to tell what the purpose of these bots is.

next "set" fresh bots. 40+ that retweeted this tweet.
(all of these bots could be the same network i don't exactly know yet)

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by @manuel_c view original on Twitter

sample accounts:
twitter.com/dustyfantoni3
twitter.com/bbfncviybks
twitter.com/harbin1843
twitter.com/bunnyphilippe12
all of them were made at the same time:

the last "set" are these bots that don't do anything but tweet articles from the guardian using a shortlink, there are only 17 of them that I have found.
these are some odd bots....

google sheet available here with all 3660 bots info and a clickable url for each bot docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

The data file for a timeline pull is to large to put onto google sheets.
Here is a CSV you can download that has the accounts timeline pull.

storage.googleapis.com/ru_accounts/de…

Here is the initial data pull for the #DeleteFacebook hashtag storage.googleapis.com/ru_accounts/%2…

some updates on these bots:
The #deletefacebook Hashtag Is Being Targeted By Bots, Porn Accounts, And Cryptocurrency Hustlers buzzfeed.com/janelytvynenko… via @janelytv

after an inquiry by buzzfeed there are only 5 left.
3655 accounts suspended.

after looking at the timeline data for all the accounts there ended up being 2 main sets of bots.
one setup to boost visibility of the tron cryptocurrency.
They overwhelmingly did one thing, retweeted #@justinsuntron

in the bots spare time they retweeted @realDonaldTrump

some right wing conspiracy accounts

and in a very russian thing to do they retweeted @RealJamesWoods who was a HUGE fan of the internet research agency (He retweeted IRA accounts constantly )

not sure what this is but the bots retweeted it:

the most popular tweets with those bots:

As usual @TwitterSafety phones it in. Do engineers even work at the place?
There are STILL at least 5000 more of these bots that haven't been suspended.
All created between 3/18 and TODAY.
They are creating accounts faster than twitter can ban them.
@JaneLytv @cwarzel

Twitter didn't think this tweet getting 1200 retweets was suspect at all???

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by @sea_weather_ view original on Twitter

this is very easy:

1. ANY account that follows or retweets @justinsuntron or @Tronfoundation IS PROBABLY BOT

2. ANY account that retweeted these tweets IS A BOT.

3. ANY account that retweeted these tweets, you guessed it: BOTS

another 5693 bots #TRON #cryptocurrency #bots
google sheet with clickable links
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

As of this morning there are almost 15000 (14897) of these bots.
I've updated the spreadsheet above.
Whoever is running them has the ability to create almost 3500 accounts PER DAY.
They have made 192 just since midnight.

Just updated the main bot list here, there are now 16000 of these bots. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

update: twitter suspended about 15800 of the bots yesterday.
unfortunately the bots are still being created, there are 2000 new ones already.
they are "restricting" them now so that's good.
this account was made just 30 minutes ago.

i've updated the main list with the 2k new bots at the bottom.

so far they have created 22000 bots over the last week.

Just out of curiosity i did a check this morning and found the botnet owners had created another 5000 accounts already.
I did a timeline pull on the bots to see what they have been tweeting.
of note here @BeltwayPundit @realDonaldTrump @RealJamesWoods and @justinsuntron

After doing a check on the retweets of about 30 of these tweets, i can add another 38425 twitter #bots to this network.

with the newest one created about an hour ago.

that brings the grand total to 60820 bots created from march 1st until now.

updated the main spreadsheet with all 60k bots, had to drop the 'ID' column due to excel not handling large numbers well
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

accounts created per day, i'm sure that due to twitter's api limitations this is missing about 70% of the bots.