Twitter has seen its share of political bot campaigns, but since spring 2022 there’s been a long-running, highly prolific bot campaign proliferating through Twitter to support former President Donald Trump. Even if you first thought it’s just the Russians again, a new report suggests these fake accounts were created a little closer to home.
A report from Israel-based social analysis company Cyabra provided to Gizmodo said several massive Twitter bot farms have been recently created to drum up support for Trump and lambaste his prospective opponents for the Republican Presidential nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
The company’s research shows the bot farm was created within the past 11 months solely to heap praise on Trump while ridiculing his potential political opponents, especially those likely to challenge him in 2024. According to the Cyabra researchers, a regular conversation on sites like Facebook or Twitter will attract between 4% to 8% of fake accounts. In many of these conversations surrounding Trump, that was up to between 20% and 40%. Over a quarter of the interactions for pro-Trump officials like Reps. Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz’ on Twitter came from bots, according to the report. It’s far, far more than left-wing accounts experience like Sen. Elizabeth Warren or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
When and where were these pro-Trump bot farms created?
The company researchers found there were three massive bot farms established in April, October, and November of last year. These interconnected bot farms were likely created in the U.S. What’s more, all these fake accounts were extremely pro-Trump and attacked anybody who made any negative mention of the former president.
Some of the ultra-MAGA accounts cited by Cyabra were created long before the bot farms were reportedly first created, but the company showed how their prolific Pro-Trump, anti-opponent tweets were getting picked up massively by bot accounts. Supposed bot accounts cited by Cyabra were created in October and retweets people’s pet pics then interspaces it with retweets complaining about “traitors” like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or former House Speaker Paul Ryan.
The attacks go beyond just the 2024 presidential race. There are a number of other bot accounts that remain prolific in right-wing circles. The report noted that even more accounts spreading antagonism toward Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy were inauthentic profiles.
AP cited Cyabra engineer Jules Gross as the first to discover the bot farms after noting that many of the accounts cited in the report were created on the same day. Gross and their company went through the different bots to see if they posted about a variety of subjects and posted any original material. Bots, in most cases, do the opposite, and based on Cyabra’s research there could be hundreds of thousands of these fake accounts trawling places like Twitter and Facebook.
Are these pro-Trump bots still active?
Gizmodo found that most, if not all, of the accounts cited by Cybara as bots were still active as of reporting time. Despite Twitter owner Elon Musk’s stated priority to eliminate bots, there does seem to be a whole lot of them stalking the platform. Worse, there are several obvious bot campaigns linked to illicit arms dealers on Telegram. It’s at this point we would reach out to Twitter for comment, but since Musk axed the company’s public relations team, we will not likely hear back.
There’s a big question whether astroturfing Twitter is actually an effective means of changing public opinion. Despite there being ongoing efforts on behalf of Russia to target conservatives with misinformation, a recent study found there was no “meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behaviour.”
What follows is more detailed look at the major politicians being promoted or called out by this latest bot offensive.
Former President Donald Trump
Cybara said it searched through Twitter for conversations surrounding Trump and the 2024 election. Of the posts that researchers identified as being pro-Trump, 64% were bots. Among those fake profiles talking about Trump, close to three quarters were spreading content supporting the ex-president.
These accounts regularly reply to supposedly real accounts, oftentimes just blasting “Trump 2024” slogans into the either, but doing so does have a marked effect of driving the Twitter conversation, or at least skewing perspectives of how much support Trump may have on the platform.
Former Gov. Nikki Haley
Even before Haley fully announced her planned run for president in 2024, bots were out and about. The report said 11% of conversations about Haley on Twitter were advanced by bots. Of those found to be fake, nearly three quarters of them were calling Haley a “RINO” or “Republican In Name Only.” Anti-Haley content created by real-life humans is also being proliferated widely.
Gov. Ron DeSantis
Everybody’s (nobody’s) favourite “meatball” DeSantis is being similarly targeted by bots, despite him not officially announcing his candidacy for president. In Twitter conversations surrounding the Florida governor, 15% of those tweets regarding him, Trump and the 2024 election contained bots. Even more curious, nearly 70% of those fake profiles were promoting that DeSantis should instead shack up with Trump as his running mate, rather than going it alone.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy and former Rep. Paul Ryan
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy went through the ringer to get nominated to his leadership position back in January. McCarthy had to reportedly capitulate to many of the most extreme far-right members of his party.
According to the Cybara report, the Twitter bots were active around that chaotic time and kept comparing McCarthy to former House Speaker Paul Ryan. A quarter of those conversations surrounding Ryan came from fake accounts, most of which were created all on the same day. The bots kept equating McCarthy to Ryan, with messages saying both were “the opposite of what we need.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer
Of course, the bots aren’t just after Republicans, and one person subject to their ire is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. According to Cyabra, 17% of conversations on Twitter and 22% on Facebook were being generated from fake profiles. The company found six separate bot campaigns that targeted news articles and press releases featuring the top Democrat from New York.
Even more curious, close to a third of negative comments about Schumer were made by bots.
Sen. Mitch McConnell
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been more outspoken in his critique of Trump. Of course, it took the ex-president’s ouster before the GOP mouthpiece could start taking potshots at the former party leader. He’s become even more critical of Trump’s place in the party after the recent midterms did not go as well as hoped. But according to the Twitter bots, McConnell is definitely a “traitor” to the party. Cyabra found that 34% of McConnell’s Twitter account interactions were made by bots. Of those bots, 94% of them used that “traitor” line with obscene regularity.
President Joe Biden
Both Trump and Biden have been caught in a wave of criticism for their handling of classified documents. Trump is currently facing a criminal investigation for housing classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago home, while Biden has been under the microscope for classified documents found at his home office in Delaware.
Yet Biden is catching much more flack online for his mishandling of documents thanks to bots. The report notes that 93% of posts made by the bots were harshly criticising Biden for mishandling the docs. These bot farms have apparently tried to create an outsized critique of the president for the faux pas while trying to minimise Trump’s long-running scandal. The report shows nearly half of the retweets from Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s critique of Biden’s document handling were from bots. An account tied to the Republican National Committee posted an ABC poll about mishandling the docs, and nearly 60% of retweets were by, you guessed it, bots.