new year, new account, same spamIn late July and throughout August 2024, a newly-created X account by the name of @kamala_wins47 has been rapidly building a following among supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. This account, however, is not as it seems; despite a now-deleted assertion of affiliation with the DNC, the account simply appears to be an effort by a random person to sell T-shirts with plagiarized designs. Additionally, this is far from the operator’s first rodeo, as several aspects of the account’s behavior are identical to those of a perennial T-shirt spammer who previously went by the name “Emily Winston” and used a stolen profile photo.these videos were not, in fact, deleted from TwitterThe original (maybe) “Emily Winston” account, with the handle @Emywinst, was created in August 2021, and amassed over 160 thousand followers before being suspended in September 2023. The account’s engagement strategy was extremely simple, and consisted of two steps:Repost a popular video and falsely claim it has been banned/deleted/removed from X/TwitterOnce the video post goes viral, reply to it with spammy ads for T-shirts.Following the suspension of the @Emywinst account, the successor accounts used this easily-identifiable strategy as well, even linking to the same T-shirt sales site. Although it is unclear how much money the operator of the account has made from selling garments, they have been highly successful at gaining followers on their various accounts.to the surprise of absolutely no one, “Emily Winston” was a stock photoThe “Emily Winston” account’s profile image was…Evolution of a T-shirt spammer