2016: How Russia’s Twitter Bots And Trolls Work With Donald Trump Campaign Accounts
An archived piece from the past.
As the Biden administration approaches, everything old is new again, and thus, Dear Mr. Putin will be uploading a few of the older articles I wrote elsewhere for ease of reference, so everything is in one place.
Here is a re-imagined version of a piece I wrote before the 2016 election in October. An archive of the original is here. Please remember: these pieces are versions of 2016 articles. Although they aren’t current, they may still be relevant. Today we learned that Steve Bannon may being held to account by the FEC for the targeted disinformation Cambridge Analytica practiced on Americans in 2016.
Trump’s Support is Real. His Twitter Support Isn’t.
Broadly speaking, Donald Trump’s real supporters aren’t on Twitter – and Trump’s Twitter supporters aren’t real.
Donald Trump does have widespread support. Even at his current polling lows, his support includes millions of Americans. But Trump’s supporters are unlikely to use Twitter. If you’ve been following the Trump campaign, you will be aware of his association with the Alt-right and with Russian bot accounts.
My own interest was in seeing how the alt-right accounts generated in Russia worked with the Trump campaign.
Definition of a Bot
There are two types of bot. Firstly, there are the purely automated accounts. These and only these are the types of bot referred to in the BBC study (which, again, did not track the most popular hashtag, #TrumpWon).
The second type of “Bot” is a human being who is working for the Russian government in a troll farm in St. Petersburg, pretending to be somebody he isn’t – like an American mother in Florida (@StaceyBrewer18, temporarily known as “Mom For Trump” on twitter).
Russian Troll Farm Bots Working With Trump Campaign Account @DanScavino
I used Trendsmap for my researches. First, I searched the tool for the “trending topic” @DanScavino.
Next, I found a bunch of Trump favoring egg accounts that displayed themselves RTing the @DanScavino account – Trendsmap allows you to see this in real time.
When you click on the profile of the newly created bot account, however, its retweet of Scavino immediately disappears.
Three such bots that I videoed in the act of using this method were @Commander6080, @Sbragusa, and @jamesdgriffin. All have profiles that pretend to be Americans and to live in the USA.
How might this affect a twitter trend? What is the point of it? One data scientist theorized as follows. It is a “fake trend” theory called “A Handoff”:
Let’s say you had a hashtag you wanted to get trending. You have a thousand bots (or Russian Trolls) and a popular account like Ricky Vaughn. You have the bots start using the hashtag, they start flooding twitter until it gets a high count (but not in the top 20 trends) then have a real person, Ricky Vaughn, start pitching the hashtag to his followers. Here is where the window of timing kicks in: within minutes, Ricky Vaughn can have something trending, but before he gets the hashtag to the top 15 you have almost all of the bots automatically delete their tweets with the hashtags. You‘ve now started “a trend” quickly and have had it associated with “Ricky Vaughn” and not a 1,000 odd bots or Russian trolls.
Here is a video of @Commander6030 using the method, and interacting with @DanScavino: [EDITOR - apologies for my horrible video, but it was done live in 2016]
One good example of a human curated Russian bot is Mom For Trump.
[EDITOR: Alas, all the tweets cached here were deleted when I was proven right that this account was a Russian troll and Twitter banned it. Back in 2016, I didn’t think so much about archiving evidence. However, some few of “Stacey’s” tweets can still be read in archive form at this link.]
Mom for Trump pretends to be in Florida. ‘S’he displays an intense interest in Russia despite a profile pretending s/he is a military wife. Here is a link to his tweets about Russia. Here is a link to his tweets about Putin; and here is a link to his tweets containing the adjective Russian.
He will regularly tweet out Russian news sources like Sputnik:
Russian Foreign Ministry: White House 'Defending the Islamic State' Terrorists: https://t.co/fJzoR6jDcy via @SputnikInt
— Mom For Trump (@StacyBrewer18) September 17, 2016
Although this is supposed to be a military wife, he boosts Russia’s military at America’s expense:
Russian jet flies within 10 feet of US Navy spy plane, defense official says | Fox News | https://t.co/JyqXykg2Kw
— Mom For Trump (@StacyBrewer18) September 7, 2016
@OnlineMagazin@Fr3333dom finally a leader with balls. Sad that I respect Putin more than my own weak prez Obummer
— Mom For Trump (@StacyBrewer18) April 25, 2016
https://t.co/PSidAa4Z96 via @youtube
PUTIN TELLS MEDIA WHO CREATED ISIS (KILLIARY & BHO)#MAGA#NeverHillary
— Mom For Trump (@StacyBrewer18) July 1, 2016
(the link to the embedded video said ‘Here’s something you never saw or heard about in the West.’)
Update: I find the identical tweet and link in a “British” Putinbot whose handler I have become fond of, @AfredAlbion:
And of course he, Mom For Trump, RTs @PrisonPlanet regularly. “Mom For Trump” cares what the internal Russian parliament is doing:
United Russia MP drafts bill ordering up to 10 years in prison for female genital mutilation https://t.co/RbuabzSysZ
— Mom For Trump (@StacyBrewer18) August 22, 2016
and even follows the Russian ambassador to the UN:
I don't blame Russia. He killed innocents in Syria during cease fire. Russians think Obama is assisting ISIS.https://t.co/YlwHzfUMlh
— Mom For Trump (@StacyBrewer18) September 18, 2016
The interesting thing about analyzing Mom For Trump is his use of most of the tropes pushed by Breitbart’s Steven Bannon, now a Trump advisor. These are:
Trump
Putin
Russia
Brexit
Nigel Farage
Many of the “EU located” Putinbots will also hawk the Russian puppet Viktor Orban, the PM of Hungary. Here’s a Spanish-language Putinbot who has chucked in an avatar boosting Assad for good measure (his account reads “the tiger of damascus”).
Sí eres blanco y cristiano encomienda tu futuro a Le Pen, Putin, Trump y Orban…o tu descendencia lo pasará muy mal.
— EL TIGRE DE DAMASCO (@tigrededamasco) October 8, 2016
“American” bot accounts curated by humans display an unhealthy interest in Nigel Farage who was denied a place in the official leave campaign.
The Putinbot Link Between Brexit And Trump
I first noticed the Russian bots during my work online to support Brexit. This is because English bot accounts, that is, Russians who locate their VPN in the UK in order to pretend to be British, were pushing Brexit. As a passionate supporter of Brexit for valid, progressive reasons, I did not want to risk the result of the referendum by drawing attention to Putin’s love of Brexit – it might have endangered the result. It is a great satisfaction to watch Boris Johnson draw up sanctions on Russia now.
Human curated bots will always favor both Brexit, and Trump. Here is an English-based Putinbot, Gilli 5. He is pretending to be a woman located in London, but he has an intense interest in Trump.
He also of course backs Brexit:
@JohnKStahlUSA clearly #killary/Obama have a very low opinion of ordinary Americans! Vote Trump! Take your country back! #brexit#trumptrain
— Gilli (@gilli5) October 17, 2016
@afneil@CllrBSilvester Thank you Brexit!!
— Gilli (@gilli5) August 18, 2016
Sadly, as most Britons reading this will know, Donald Trump is utterly despised in the UK. “Gilli5” forgot that he was not meant to show he was really tweeting from Russia and is a Russian:
Dolphins have strong family bonds – why separate mother & calf for your entertainment? @szhurovapic.twitter.com/vkSwR3P7d3 #вместесдельфинами
— Gilli (@gilli5) October 25, 2015
Gilli is also working with Scavino and Prison Planet.
@PrisonPlanet @wikileaks desperate times! Desperate Measures! Like living in Jim Carey Movie
— Gilli (@gilli5) October 19, 2016
But let’s look at “American based” Putinbots with their intense, Steve Bannon approved interest in the nobody, Nigel Farage:
WATCH: Nigel Farage declares VICTORY in EU referendum with barnstorming speech https://t.co/mbXZzdI6SQ
BREXIT IS WINNING! GO BRITS!
— Mom For Trump (@StacyBrewer18) June 24, 2016
Racism & fascism terms are used to shut down free speech. Ppl like you overuse these terms, therefore they are meanless. Go Farage & Trump! https://t.co/dhqwsIpsjs
— Mom For Trump (@StacyBrewer18) October 14, 2016
Here’s “Veterans For Russia” sorry Trump:
@rosaspefumadas @Nigel_Farage @realDonaldTrump @CNNhe does! I thought the same thing!! Is why I'm now a Nigel fan!
— Veterans For Trump (@Veteran4Trump) June 30, 2016
Car bomb explodes in Russia at check point: ISlS claims responsibility; killing a Police Officer injuring 15+ https://t.co/wvLuGT2Ovv
— Veterans For Trump (@Veteran4Trump) March 30, 2016
Putin asks Obama why media blacked out Donald Trump appearance at the Great Faith Ministries Church https://t.co/7jPiquS1Re#BlacksForTrump
— Veterans For Trump (@Veteran4Trump) September 8, 2016
“Veteran4Trump” like “Mom4Trump” references the identical “barrell roll incident” we saw earlier:
@Kathy73942403 @yesdog1942 No wonder Putin is doing barrel rolls over our battleships. The world knows our situation under Obama
— Veterans For Trump (@Veteran4Trump) May 2, 2016
Looks like Russia's president is going to take care of what Obama refuses to do! Russia's largest warship enroute https://t.co/HoPLfBY5IU
— Veterans For Trump (@Veteran4Trump) July 4, 2016
(I’m slightly losing the will to live here, but I plough on).
Finally: Accounts The Russian Troll Bots Have in Common
These are the accounts that you will always find interacting with the Russian bots. Before he was banned by Twitter, Ricky Vaughan. And Microchip, who gets banned and reincarnates with a new number at the end of his name: the latest is @WDFx2EU7 (surely it should not be beyond the wit of Twitter engineers to block the avi photo and any combo of the letters and Micro).
“Message Discipline”
Coda: Finding A Common Message Pushed Out by Both Types of Putinbot
One easy way to spot a Russian troll, whether curated or automated, is to look for them pushing out the identical message. Do we remember that “Putin: How Obama Created ISIS” video?
My friend @AfredAlbion (go easy on him CIA, I think we can turn him) tweeted that video out in 2014. “Mom For Trump” tweeted it out this year. What if we run the search through Twitter?
This happens (see link). Please note the “various” “diverse” profiles Russian men are adopting here. We have an Hispanic woman, a Muslim woman, a white far left Bernie Sanders supporter, and a patriotic redneck.
The United States is not exceptional. Not at all. In fact, we are the creators of today's evil. #BringBernieBackhttps://t.co/mrnQoirjvZ
— Global Revolution (@jacobflowers) October 14, 2016
Putin Tells Everyone Exactly Who Created ISIShttps://t.co/3rKSUd7WW8 via @YouTube
RESPECT FOR HIS WISE WORDS!!
— Sofia Cunha (@Sofia_Exoia) October 19, 2016
I found listening to Putin very informative. See what you think. https://t.co/drd5gBgR6F
— Lainy Sunshine (@ACTwithLainy) October 18, 2016
Putin calls out #obama and #hillary Putin Tells Everyone Exactly Who Created ISIS https://t.co/9fPvk0urEW#imwithher
— Red,White & F#*k You (@Patriot762x51mm) October 18, 2016
Putin Tells Everyone Exactly Who Created ISIS https://t.co/00sxcVTLrj via @YouTube and that was US plus its little poodles
— Phillipa60 (@gengh60) October 17, 2016
unbelievers are the same
Putin Tells Everyone Exactly Who Created ISIShttps://t.co/5R7oHZJ2qQ via @YouTube— Somurys (@Somurys) October 16, 2016
but wait! There’s more! By using this method we can see how the Russian troll farm places its fictional accounts around the world and in multiple languages. Australia, Germany, Japan, Africa…
トランプさんが言ってる趣旨を聞くとプーチン氏のこの会見を思い出す。→ Putin Tells Everyone Exactly Who Created ISIS https://t.co/xKf74j9JQO @YouTubeさんから
— 武者小路 丈径 (@takemichi01) August 13, 2016
Vladimir Putin Tells Everyone Exactly Who he believes Created ISIS.https://t.co/BsdDrjMKSt
— Tumišang Masemola (@BTMasemola) August 20, 2016
Here’s Dutch, from a Holland-based account:
Putin legt glashelder uit wie uiteindelijk ISIS gecreëerd heeft!! Putin Tells Everyone Exactly Who Created ISIS https://t.co/1o5lxfZwA9
— JW van den Born (@janwillemvdborn) August 12, 2016
Spanish….
También me hago las mismas preguntas. Nadie responde. Putin Tells Everyone Exactly Who Created ISIS https://t.co/nUKmEAxRCN
— Nadya (@Nadya_Neviges) August 2, 2016
French, German….
#Putin Explains How #Obama Created #ISIS // #Poutine explique comment #Obama a créé #Daesh https://t.co/NMQuqihLAr
— Bruno B. #E4E #LPE (@bbidoill) April 5, 2016