How online trolls, bots, and single-purpose hate accounts continue to weaponize Twitter under Elon Musk — The Persian-speaking Twittersphere is, without a doubt, one of the most heavily manipulated corners of Twitter, where hashtag manipulation — as well as targeted abuse — have been rampant for years. Historically, targeted abuse across the Persian-speaking Twittersphere has been directed towards Iranian-American journalists, academics, analysts, civil society members, and…

How pushing for accountability & transparency resulted in the suspension of my Twitter account (again) — ** The Streisand effect is very powerful, hence please do me a huge favor and share this post to Twitter ** Background For years, I have publicly documented a wide-ranging set of examples illustrating how Twitter does a horrible job enforcing their own rules (specific to platform manipulation and spam). …

A closer look into a college professor/Harvard law grad driving the attacks — In August 2021, I wrote about New York Times journalist, Farnaz Fassihi, being targeted on Twitter by sockpuppet accounts that artificially amplify the content of authentic accounts, while also attempting to character assassinate her simply for doing her job — namely, reporting on Iran. Unfortunately, Twitter continues to allow such…

Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, put forward a 16 tweet thread yesterday addressing Elon Musk’s claim that more than 5% of Twitter’s user base is comprised of inauthentic accounts:

How inauthentic Twitter accounts are being used to create the illusion of support — Having spent the past week attending NFT.NYC — where more than 5 thousand tickets were sold and several additional thousand people were in NYC for the event — NFTs are all the rage these days. OpenSea, the dominant NFT marketplace (with 60% market share), was created in December 2017, and…

How inauthentic Twitter accounts are being used to create the illusion of support — In December 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Ripple and two of their executives — Chris Larsen and Brad Garlinghouse — with raising “over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.” This triggered the online community of XRP supporters, which is often referred to…

Twitter refuses to curb online attacks directed at Farnaz Fassihi — The New York Times issued a statement last week standing by one of their journalists, Farnaz Fassihi, who, for months, has “faced vile threats and attacks” on Twitter: Social media platforms have been revolutionary in that they have given voices to those who otherwise may not have gotten their stories…

Twitter refuses to curb platform manipulation targeting U.S. citizens — The Dissident — a documentary that tells the story of the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi — was released to U.S. audiences in December 2020. Prior to Khashoggi’s murder (October 2018), for years, he was targeted online by Saudi’s “electronic army” (or “electronic flies”) — state-backed information operations anchored by a…

Being doxed by a Twitter account linked to a joint intelligence operation — On January 29th, 2019, in the midst of having my Twitter account swarmed by hordes of inauthentic accounts, there was a flurry of notifications, in particular, that I found especially troubling. Two weeks prior, I tweeted a thread highlighting how #WeSupportPolandSummit was manipulated, resulting in the hashtag trending: