paulmd199

Thanks, this is very informative.

Update on this: I can now firmly say that this is a retweet scam.

See:

https://twitter.com/MarissaTanyat

Who also tweeted the following:

#GetInShape with my online #training https://twitter.com/Obi_Obadike/status/443220721888546816

Snowden Haarp.... (which connects it to the same botnet) https://twitter.com/MarissaTanyat/status/443534242820001792

So officially, they're only spammers, not spooks.

PS: Did I mention that I still despise spammers?

Seriously, I'm not in the tinfoil camp. I have perhaps read a few too many Snowden documents, in detail. There are a few things I've see, concerning the use of social media. Things like "can we craft a message to go viral"

I really didn't like the message that linked Snowden to HAARP, for all kinds of reasons. It creates a false link between his documents, and the tinfoil theories surrounding HAARP, (global assassination, etc). And I have indeed seen some fake articles that tried to make precisely that claim. That kind of link would also put Snowden, and those who believe that he did the right thing, into the tinfoil-crazy camp. So it smelled bad. Maybe it's just random gibberish, like a lot of the messages. But it really smelled.

Why GCHQ vs NSA.... the most vile tricks we've learned about come from them. The Neo-COINTELPRO stuff.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...

Other than that, I do have a serious aversion to spammers.

35000 was the tip of the iceberg, it was a small sampling, not an exhaustive list. I'm only one guy with no power-toys. In all honesty, this is probably a million-account-plus botnet.

There is a possibility that this was a botnet that sells followers. I know that this one wasn't into retweeting or linking to anything, though such botnets do exist.

I wasn't able to prove that is the case with that particular network, as there were a number of "following nobody, and nobody follows" accounts. But I've found another that for sure is in the business of so doing. How does one person with only four very banal tweets get 4000 followers? It turns out that his followers are indeed bots. This network I will be collecting too. Maybe it will turn out to overlap.

@paulmd199

PS: I won't insist on the theory that it's government sponsored bot. it could well be commercial, or just run by some jerk.