Summary
On November 12, 2021, conservative influencers began using the hashtag “RacistJoe.” The hashtag ultimately appeared in trending topics on Twitter. Our data analysis strongly suggests that the trend was at least partially the consequence of platform manipulation. Behavior similar to what we observed in the “RacistJoe” data has been reported in the past as an attempt to influence public opinion and media reporting. The heightened engagement, brought about through coordinated activity, games the algorithm and results in more people seeing the boosted content, sometimes reaching users who do not already follow the tweet authors.
An examination of users retweeting two or more of the RacistJoe-related tweets analyzed by Hoaxlines revealed traits associated with platform manipulation. That the misleading campaign trended on Twitter, drowning out the most relevant voices like that of the President of the Negro Leagues Museum, demonstrates how a small group could effectively silence opposition.
At least two users in the dataset appeared to target the username “POTUS.” Targeting the US President may not achieve the goals ordinarily associated with social media harassment, which are “to silence members of civil society, muddy their reputations, and stifle the reach of their messaging,” according to the Mozilla Fellow Odanga Madung. Still, Hoaxlines documented the findings for potential research value. Twitter platform manipulation policies already address many of the problematic behaviors observed by Hoaxlines, but enforcement is inconsistent, leaving the United States vulnerable to domestic and foreign manipulation alike.
Key findings
- Hoaxlines’ examination of accounts retweeting two or more #RacistJoe-related tweets revealed that many users had traits associated with inauthentic accounts. We define inauthentic accounts as an online entity (a social media account or a website) misleading about who it is or its purpose. Inauthentic behavior and platform manipulation do not necessarily indicate that activity is automated.
- Users that retweeted more than one of the #RacistJoe-related tweets have some or all of the following: blank profiles, formulaic handles, recently created profiles, dormant accounts, no identifiable information, and a narrow range of interests at the population level, a phenomenon not found in datasets consisting of genuine accounts.
- Multiple users retweeting two or more of the RacistJoe-related tweets had a posting rate that Oxford Internet Institute’s Computational Propaganda project (averaging over 55 tweets per day) and the Digital Forensics Lab (averaging over 75 tweets per day) have both classified as indicative of inauthentic activity. Hoaxlines found multiple users posting more than 500 times per day and a user that posted as many as 1000 times per day or 150 times per hour.
- Data visualizations of the network revealed structures that have appeared in past inauthentic campaigns, boosting content around the world over the past decade. Researchers in past studies have found that specific statistical relationships between accounts, sometimes calculated for use in data visualization, can help reveal networks boosting false content.
- A group of 646 users who retweeted two or more #RacistJoe-related tweets had creation dates that skewed toward 2020 and 2021, something common to information operations regardless of the actors behind them.
- Activity in the #RacistJoe dataset remained concentrated around a handful of tweets as the network grew larger, which conflicts with what we expect as a trending topic takes off organically. A landmark social bot study in Nature (2018) stated, “… as a story reaches a broader audience organically, the contribution of any individual account or group of accounts should matter less.” We did not see that in this case and, if anything, observed the opposite.
Summary
On November 12, 2021, conservative influencers began using the hashtag “RacistJoe.” The hashtag ultimately appeared in trending topics on Twitter. Our data analysis strongly suggests that the trend was at least partially the consequence of platform manipulation. Behavior similar to what we observed in the “RacistJoe” data has been reported in the past as an attempt to influence public opinion and media reporting. The heightened engagement, brought about through coordinated activity, games the algorithm and results in more people seeing the boosted content, sometimes reaching users who do not already follow the tweet authors.
An examination of users retweeting two or more of the RacistJoe-related tweets analyzed by Hoaxlines revealed traits associated with platform manipulation. That the misleading campaign trended on Twitter, drowning out the most relevant voices like that of the President of the Negro Leagues Museum, demonstrates how a small group could effectively silence opposition.
At least two users in the dataset appeared to target the username “POTUS.” Targeting the US President may not achieve the goals ordinarily associated with social media harassment, which are “to silence members of civil society, muddy their reputations, and stifle the reach of their messaging,” according to the Mozilla Fellow Odanga Madung. Still, Hoaxlines documented the findings for potential research value. Twitter platform manipulation policies already address many of the problematic behaviors observed by Hoaxlines, but enforcement is inconsistent, leaving the United States vulnerable to domestic and foreign manipulation alike.
Key findings
- Hoaxlines’ examination of accounts retweeting two or more #RacistJoe-related tweets revealed that many users had traits associated with inauthentic accounts. We define inauthentic accounts as an online entity (a social media account or a website) misleading about who it is or its purpose. Inauthentic behavior and platform manipulation do not necessarily indicate that activity is automated.
- Users that retweeted more than one of the #RacistJoe-related tweets have some or all of the following: blank profiles, formulaic handles, recently created profiles, dormant accounts, no identifiable information, and a narrow range of interests at the population level, a phenomenon not found in datasets consisting of genuine accounts.
- Multiple users retweeting two or more of the RacistJoe-related tweets had a posting rate that Oxford Internet Institute’s Computational Propaganda project (averaging over 55 tweets per day) and the Digital Forensics Lab (averaging over 75 tweets per day) have both classified as indicative of inauthentic activity. Hoaxlines found multiple users posting more than 500 times per day and a user that posted as many as 1000 times per day or 150 times per hour.
- Data visualizations of the network revealed structures that have appeared in past inauthentic campaigns, boosting content around the world over the past decade. Researchers in past studies have found that specific statistical relationships between accounts, sometimes calculated for use in data visualization, can help reveal networks boosting false content.
- A group of 646 users who retweeted two or more #RacistJoe-related tweets had creation dates that skewed toward 2020 and 2021, something common to information operations regardless of the actors behind them.
- Activity in the #RacistJoe dataset remained concentrated around a handful of tweets as the network grew larger, which conflicts with what we expect as a trending topic takes off organically. A landmark social bot study in Nature (2018) stated, “… as a story reaches a broader audience organically, the contribution of any individual account or group of accounts should matter less.” We did not see that in this case and, if anything, observed the opposite.