Twitter Accounts Message: "Radical Anchorage Assembly"
Social media can be a powerful tool in the fight against misinformation. Still, as we've seen in recent years, it can also be weaponized to wage a political war where hundreds and thousands of people can be reached and influenced with an alluring message designed to coax a reader into clicking a link.
Last October, numerous Twitter accounts appeared on the social media service to share the same repeated message:
"Bernadette Wilson lights up the 'Radical' Anchorage Assembly in the wake... youtu.be/Bt5wD7nwnSg via @YouTube"
The tweets came at a time when former Anchorage mayor Ethan Berkowitz was set to resign on October 23, 2021, about a "sexting" scandal involving former News Net Lead Anchor Maria Athens.
Some Twitter accounts posted variations of the tweet, most directly linking to the Must Read Alaska video titled "Bernadette Wilson lights up the 'Radical Left' Anchorage Assembly in the wake of Mayor 'SEXTING' scandal," which has been viewed over 44,000 times.
To summarize the video, the individual testified and railed against the emergency powers of the Anchorage mayor and encouraged the opening up of business just two months before Anchorage would begin a modified hunker-down order as hospitals approached their hospitalization capacity breaking point. Anticipating more COVID-19-related hospitalizations, Providence requested at least one mobile morgue in November.
Other accounts that utilized the same verbiage and YouTube link in their tweets were also linked to the website WeLoveTrump.com which directed users to an article about Ms. Wilson's testimony, with the Must Read Alaska YouTube video embedded into the web page. WeLoveTrump.com, which is often posted to Facebook as "news," is regularly flagged as false or misleading information. The domain appears on a Github list "of Alt-Right, Fascist and Fake News Domains that should be banned from any civilized network."
Some Twitter accounts that shared the Must Read Alaska video and the WeLoveTrump.com link appear legitimate. Still, others appear to be Twitterbots, accounts under automated control.
One such Twitter account was analyzed utilizing a popular and well-known Twitter Bot identifier which flagged the account as problematic and strongly recommended users avoid the account and consider reporting it to Twitter. According to the Bot Sentinel website, which tracks and identifies and potentially inauthentic/problematic Twitter accounts:
"Inauthentic accounts are nefarious individuals pretending to be something they are not to deceive their followers and audience, or automated accounts (bots) developed to behave as humanly as possible with the intent to deceive. Bad actors use inauthentic accounts to sow discord and cause chaos on social media platforms, and they are often used to engage in targeted harassment and toxic trolling."
Similarly, many accounts were identified as having promoted anti-mask rhetoric and scientifically debunked conspiracy theories related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The accounts also retweeted tweets in support of embattled QAnon adherent Marjorie Taylor Greene.
It's unknown and often difficult to determine who is behind Twitter Bot accounts. In one analysis done last year on 200 million tweets about the Coronavirus pandemic, researchers said that 45% were sent by accounts that behaved more like computerized robots than humans and likely had Russian and Chinese origins.
Technology Review wrote that:
"Nearly half of Twitter accounts pushing to reopen America may be bots," and "there has been a huge upswell of Twitter bot activity since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, amplifying medical disinformation and the push to reopen America."
