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Hey. It's been a rough health week. I've postponed my birthday fun until the 17th. Thanks to all for your wishes.
Major gear shift. I want to talk about the recent uptick in hacked inactive accounts, and what many of them are doing recently. #YourSlipIsShowing
Major gear shift. I want to talk about the recent uptick in hacked inactive accounts, and what many of them are doing recently. #YourSlipIsShowing
Hacked inactive accounts - ones that haven't tweeted in 4 years or more that suddenly spring to life and start tweeting feverishly about controversial topics - have been a problem that @TwitterSupport has been aware of for many years. I told them in 2015. #YourSlipIsShowing
One of my criterion in the earliest version of #YourSlipIsShowing was join date. EndFathersDay, the poorly planned and badly executed 4Chan troll campaign designed (presumably) to fracture Twitter's feminist communities, was enacted by accounts that weren't even a week old.
Even now, displaying an account's Twitter join date is compulsory, and difficult to manipulate. Various types of agitator accounts - wedge accounts, troll accounts, plants, bots, and skipskop scallywops - are easier to spot if their accounts look newish. #YourSlipIsShowing
When long inactive accounts started going live, and tweeting support of Trump and Bernie Sanders - while attacking Hillary Clinton - in late 2014/early 2015, I knew that we weren't dealing with 4Chan asshats anymore. At least not exclusively. #YourSlipIsShowing
Of COURSE, you could still search the account's tweets by date from join date, and conclude that it was indeed bizarre that an apolitical mom from Connecticut who mostly tweeted recipes was suddenly outspoken about Clinton, after 5 years of radio silence. #YourSlipIsShowing
But most people don't work that way. They see an old join date and assume credibility/sincerity. They don't dig. So manipulating people on this platform in the interest of furthering a plethora of agendas was and is that much easier. #YourSlipIsShowing
Until now, I've been able to suss out what the aims of these hacked and repurposed accounts were, by simply scrolling through their tweets. Narratives and patterns emerge pretty quickly if you read. Some accounts exist to create discord, upset, and strife. #YourSlipIsShowing
After the events of January 6, I noticed a sharp increase in the activity of discord accounts. And once again, they are targeting minorities, especially Black people. To what end this time, I do not know. The parties behind it, I can't even guess. I'm alarmed. #YourSlipIsShowing
In many ways, what I've observed is basic classic trolling. But the timing plus the high number of suspicious accounts engaged in said trolling tells me that these fucknuggets have marching orders.
Just be extra careful right now about who you engage/amplify. #YourSlipIsShowing
Just be extra careful right now about who you engage/amplify. #YourSlipIsShowing
