[exDM69]

There is a well funded and well organized COVID-19 misinformation and smear campaign targeted at citizens of the small country I live in. The same is probably true for pretty much any country right now, but in this case we're talking about a target audience of single digit millions with a language that isn't spoken anywhere else.

To make matters worse, this does not seem to be bots but sock puppet accounts and the tweets they put out seem to be written by humans. This campaign has some ties to certain political parties too.

What are some means that I could, as a technical person, assist my journalist friends in digging out some info about these actors and their connections? This article gave some pointers, but did not go into specifics.

I am mostly interested in Twitter activity. The situation is similar on Facebook but I am less interested in that side. Any tools for digging out some Twitter statistics, given a handful of accounts and suspicious tweets to start with?

[aero-glide2]

Don't know how to message users on hackernews, so posting as a reply here hope you don't mind. Saw your comment from 5 years ago about wishing Orbiter was open source. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12943028 The author has now made it open source! https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threads/orbiter-is-now-open-so...

[rhizome]

>Don't know how to message users on hackernews, so posting as a reply here

I love this. JWZ eat your heart out!

[exo-pla-net]

What makes you believe that what you're observing is a misinformation campaign, and not just the usual crop of zealous conspiracy nuts?

[atoav]

What makes you believe the two aren't overlapping to some degree?

Here is a Guardian article talking about German zealous conspircay nuts organizing a anti-vax protest in Australia: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/27/who-b...

[im3w1l]

I wouldn't count that as misinformation; it is sincere advocacy. A misinformation campaign would be organized by intelligency agency for the purpose of weakening another country.

[atoav]

A misinformation campaign is a campaign (=concerted communication effort) to spread misinformation.

Whether the people who spread it know it is in fact misinformation is a different discussion. Whether someone just fed into existing grievances in a clever way another one altogether.

[exo-pla-net]

Not exactly a bot misinformation campaign, but interesting, thanks.

I think of QAnon types as being a bit muddle-headed. I doubt they're capable of creating a bot campaign. Russia could, but they don't need to: we do it to ourselves.

An Occam/Hanlon's Razor corollary: don't attribute to bots or shills that which idiocy can fully explain.

[exDM69]

The Q movement has all the hallmarks of an astroturfing campaign. Don't assume it's just a bunch of idiots.

[exDM69]

There are some useful idiots in the mix but some of the individuals do it obviously as a full time job. They are also more skilled at it than the average nutcase. It seems to be their job to put the words into the mouths of these conspiracy nuts.

I'm have a suspicion that some of them are funded by an entity backed by a nation state actor. These individuals have connections to some earlier ops whose backing has been revealed.

[martindale]

Build a reputation network.