Hundreds of thousands of fake, automated pro-Trump accounts on Twitter are attacking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Someone set up tens of thousands of fake Twitter accounts over the last year to support and praise former president Donald Trump and crush anyone in his way.
The bots aggressively state DeSantis would make a terrific running mate but would not defeat Trump.
Playing extra dirty
Whoever created the bot network is attempting to tip the scales as Republican voters evaluate their candidates for the upcoming elections. They are doing this by utilizing online manipulation strategies developed by the Kremlin to sway the conversation on digital platforms about candidates and by using Twitter's algorithms to increase their reach.
Someone is running a pro-Trump troll farm on Twitter.
To map out these bots, researchers plan to examine activity patterns across these accounts. Human users frequently post about different subjects, whether original content or reposted material. Bots, on the other hand, post stick the same content about the same topics.
Ultimately, these bots have a clear motive.
What are social bots?
Bots are fake, automated accounts that gained notoriety after being used by Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Big tech corporations have gotten better at spotting fake accounts in the meantime. However, the network discovered by Cyabra demonstrates that they still significantly affect how political discourse is shaped online.
Three distinct networks of Twitter accounts, all of which were formed in sizable batches in April, October, and November of 2022, make up the new pro-Trump network. Researchers estimate that tens of thousands of accounts may be involved, if not hundreds of thousands.
Each account includes a name and private images of the purported account holder. While other identities reposted content from real users, some accounts produced their original stuff, frequently in response to real people.
What does Elon Musk have to say to this? He seemed concerned with the bot activity before buying Twitter. And he's also the person who brought Trump back to Twitter. So far, we don't have a comment from Mr. Musk.
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