This war correspondent does not exist

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by widespread interest in real-time news and information on the conflict, and an explosion of Ukraine-themed “news” accounts on social media have…

How to find swarms of fake Twitter followers

How does one go about detecting large-scale inauthentic follower growth on Twitter? Generally, organized fake follower activity has two traits that set it apart from extremely rapid organic growth:Large fake…

GAN-tastic satisfied customers

At first glance, coupons.ivoicesoft.com, a website which allegedly offers discounts on a variety of software products, appears to have a lot of satisfied customers. The site is full of brief…

Genocide denial and spam

Over the last several years, evidence of large-scale ongoing human rights abuses committed by the Chinese government against Uyghurs and other minority groups in Xinjiang has surfaced with increasing frequency.…

Scraping public GoFundMe donation data

The crowdfunding platform GoFundMe currently makes the most recent 1000 donations to each fundraiser publicly available via a scrollable list. (Private payment-related information is not available, but a user’s public…

A thousand followers and none

Businesses that sell fake social media accounts and fake social media followers all face the problem that, sooner or later, the inauthentic nature of their merchandise is discovered and the…

The ongoing saga of a persistent fake persona

whoever is making these fake accounts is certainly dedicatedOver the last three years, an unknown entity has created a series of very similar-looking inauthentic Twitter accounts, each with the same…

The Curious Case of BNN

spoiler: no evidence of an “extensive network of reporters across the globe” was foundBNN (the “Breaking News Network”, a news website operated by tech entrepreneur and convicted domestic abuser Gurbaksh…

Anatomy of an online outrage mob

The official Twitter accounts of hospitals, school districts, and other medical and educational institutions don’t generally get a ton of engagement. This changes drastically, however, when right-wing social media influencer…