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Twitter suspends army of fake accounts after Trump thanks propaganda bot for support

Trojita

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/08/twitter-suspends-army-of-fake-accounts-after-trump-thanks-propaganda-bot-for-supporting-him/#.WYkpfENJT0g.twitter

EhCPuc5.jpg


Twitter suspended a number of fake accounts over the weekend that were using false names to spread pro-Trump propaganda.

In a tweet on Saturday, President Donald Trump expressed thanks to Twitter user @Protrump45, an account that posted exclusively positive memes about the president. But the woman whose name was linked to the account told Heavy that her identity was stolen and that she planned to file a police report. The victim asserted that her identity was used to sell pro-Trump merchandise.

Although ”Nicole Mincey" was the name displayed on the Twitter page, it was not the name used to create the account. The real name of the victim has been withheld to protect her privacy.

The @Protrump45 account also linked to the website Protrump45.com which specialized in Trump propaganda. All of the articles on the website were posted by other Twitter users, which also turned out to be fakes.
Click to expand...

Now that is Digital Human Face
 
B

BatDan

Bane? Get them on board, I'll call it in.
Multiple bots have been found, using stock photos. One guy even posted a completely different person in their timelin under the assumption of "they both have mustaches, nobody will tell the difference".

I know it's wrong, but it's funny how they had to "lighten" her. Can't be TOO black.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
Not only did they steal someone's picture for it, they whitened her dark skin. It's like an onion stuffed with cheetos.
 
T

TheMagician

Member
I see a lot of fake conservative accounts doing this on UK Twitter stories.

The clues are often in who they follow and who follows them as well as their tweet history. You see them where they're 25 year old women with interests like clothes, football, films, holidays etc but then they follow like 5 accounts which are the official government account and a few news sources. Their tweets are solely based on political activity as well.

People are getting paid by the governments to pretend to be real people online.
 
N

Nepenthe

Member
Do these people ever think that if you have to create false information to maintain a narrative, then your narrative's probably shit?
 
S

Saint Gregory

Member
If Twitter were to actually filter out all of the bots on their service I wonder how many followers Trump would lose? As much as I'd miss Wario it would be worth it just to find out.
 
G

gcubed

Member
I'd love to see how much Twitter crashed if they actually removed bot accounts from their active user list.
 
Smiles and Cries

Smiles and Cries

Member
twitter knows at least 50% of their accounts are fakes or dupes anyway. I doubt this is going to fix the problem

they would have to verify everyone using a photo ID

give celebrities a gold verified icon to keep them for bitching about everyone being verified
 
P

pastrami

Member
Nepenthe said:
Do these people ever think that if you have to create false information to maintain a narrative, then your narrative's probably shit?
Click to expand...

The US just elected a reality celebrity with questionable business acumen and no government experience as the POTUS. I don't think they care if it's a shitty narrative as long as it works.
 
S

Saganator

Member
Wow, I see that bot on every Trump tweet, it always replies to his tweets within minutes. I've even had to let a few dismayed people know that it's just a twitter bot, that really isn't a black woman supporting Trump.

Did they ban that fake "Immigrants for Trump" bot? I hope so.

What about the bots that like/retweet all of Trump's tweets? Trump's tweets have hundreds of likes and retweets seconds after he tweets.
 
S

Sho_Nuff82

Member
Smiles and Cries said:
twitter knows at least 50% of their accounts are fakes or dupes anyway. I doubt this is going to fix the problem

they would have to verify everyone using a photo ID

give celebrities a gold verified icon to keep them for bitching about everyone being verified
Click to expand...

I like the way bumble verifies accounts.

"Take a clear photo making this pose we assign you at random, we'll verify you a as the person in your pictures in 5 minutes".
 
F

Finale Fireworker

Member
I'd like to see the receipts on this "army" that's been banned. One (correction: Some) infamous bot is a good start, I guess, but that's a drop in the bucket.
 
K

KingV

Member
Twitter needs to take down the bot accounts. Glad they are finally taking the first step.

But they have willingly let themselves be used as a propaganda machine, against their own TOS, in support of advertising dollars.
 
Nikodemos

Nikodemos

Member
KingV said:
Twitter needs to take down the bot accounts. Glad they are finally taking the first step.

But they have willingly let themselves be used as a propaganda machine, against their own TOS, in support of advertising dollars.
Click to expand...
Except since the bot accounts don't buy stuff, all those ads are for naught. They might as well just run them as an auto-impression script on a server for all the new customers they'll bring (that is, zero).
 
S

Sho_Nuff82

Member
D

Dead Prince

Banned
Sho_Nuff82 said:
Reading the story I'm getting the sense that the "real" Nicole Mincy isn't as distanced from this account as she originally claimed.

https://heavy.com/news/2017/08/nicole-mincey-trump-store-new-jersey-who-is-gear-twitter-bio/amp/

This story is pretty wacky for what I assumed was a basic account theft. The real person even admits to posting pro-Trump memes on her FB and IG, and seems someway connected to the social circle that set up the "bot" account. Fuckery abounds.
Click to expand...

trump already getting a spinoff episode from dateline. amazing.
 
V

Virzeth

Member
Saint Gregory said:
If Twitter were to actually filter out all of the bots on their service I wonder how many followers Trump would lose? As much as I'd miss Wario it would be worth it just to find out.
Click to expand...

Oldish article (5/30) http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-twitter-followers-fake-617873, updated figures below.
Anyone can amass an exorbitant number of Twitter followers. You don't even have to be famous. All you have to do is pay for them. The comedian Joe Mande currently has a healthy 1.01 million followers, but his bio contains a caveat: "twitter is trash, facebook's the devil, i bought a million followers for like $400 none of this shit matters antarctica is melting."

...

Because Donald Trump is the president of the United States and the most famous person on the planet, one wouldn't think he would need to employ a bot to boost his Twitter following. It appears, however, he might have done just that. As screenwriter John Niven pointed out Tuesday morning, Trump's Twitter account saw an unusual spike in followers over the weekend, many of which appear to have been created artificially.

Trump currently has 31 million followers and, sure enough, if you browse through them you will find an unusual number of tweet-less, picture-less accounts that joined the service in May 2017. If you're still curious, you can enter Trump's handle, @realDonaldTrump, into Twitter Audit, a service that assesses the authenticity of one's followers, and find that only 51 percent of Trump's are real.
Click to expand...


0twDplV.png

https://www.twitteraudit.com/realdonaldtrump


...and, in comparison...

ehSpSA2.png

https://www.twitteraudit.com/BarackObama
 
W

wetflame

Pizza Dog
Foffy said:
I wonder how the r/The_Donald is taking this...

"CENSORSHIP! THEY'RE ATTACKING THE TRUTH TELLERS."
Click to expand...

They'll just ignore it. They can't handle anything that doesn't fit within their worldview so will just move on to whatever the next toxic thing they can make themselves feel special about is.
 
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