How Disinformation Bots are Born
When two political systems hate each other very much...
The Twitter Account https://twitter.com/CaptCoronado is very likely to be an disinformation troll account.
Special thanks to Cyabra for allowing me to use their software.
The account was started in November of 2022.
However, no tweets were posted until January 4th, 2023. The first post ever from the account was a reply to internet gadfly Phillip Buchanan regarding the fight to elect Congressman Kevin McCarthy to the Speaker of the House.
The account then sends out 68 tweets over a period of 3 days.
Before becoming dormant until February 4th when the account reemerges, this time using an iPhone.
The account’s first tweet is about the 2023 Chinese Spy Balloon.
The account enters a pattern where they:
Average 38 Tweets per day
Most frequently post 25 tweets per day
The account is most active on weekdays with weekend postings dropping by 1/3rd.
The account tends to be dormant between 1AM and 8AM.
The account claims to have been a number of things during their claimed military career.
They claim that they were an Army recruiter.
They claim they were a Bradley commander in Bosnia and Kosovo.
They claim they were a paratrooper.
They claim that they were a political advisor to a NATO 3 star general.
However, the account states several incorrect facts about the Patriot missile.
The account then misidentifies a Stryker as a tank. A person who had actually commanded Bradleys would not make this mistake.
The account also claims that cluster bombs are “illegal.” This is incorrect and not a mistake a former Army officer would make.
Also note the broken English and frequent use of double exclamation points. Double exclamation points are never used in English, although there is some use in Japan.
Finally, the user lies about the 101st Airborne deploying to Jordan for an Iran invasion.
This lie was designed to make a regular, scheduled brigade rotation to Romania seem like a threat to Iran.
Note that Jordan does not border Iran and if troops were being deployed to fight Iran, Iraq would be a better point for an invasion, especially since base infrastructure is already there.
Using the ICD 203 standards, I believe that it is very likely user “CaptCornado” is a disinformation seeding bot.
The raw data excel file is available here.
The video on the Patriot missile:
The video on Eric Shinseki and the Stryker
Great work as always.
I would like to see a video on how Tik Tok is used by the CCP to spread misinformation. We hear politicians and news outlets talk about it, without too much substance.
Best, and Happy New Years. Keep up the great work.
Thank you Ryan. I've learned so much about how the internet actually works and how easily disinformation is spread on social media platforms.
I've noticed thousands of recent new members with moronic names followed by a series of numbers and letters, which I now know are trolls and troll farms trying like hell to spread confusion and doubt, along with outright lies.
Keep up the excellent work of behind the scenes methods and information used to combat this new battlefield.