If you have ever had the misfortune of arguing with @SallyAlbright under the assumption of good faith, you have probably been shocked at how inane some of her statements can be.
Perhaps more shocking is the fact that there seems to be many people online that actually agree with her horrible tweets. Being inundated with notifications of strangers agreeing with bad tweets, rather than your good tweets, can be disorienting.
Who would agree with and then retweet these horrible responses!? Why are all of these people camping out deep in the comments just to retweet bad replies?
Well, turns out it’s just Sally. Her sockpuppet influence campaign has continued brazenly since it was exposed in late January. With over fifty fake accounts, she gaslights and supresses oposition while amplifying messages such as: free college is racist, Bernie Sanders is a Russian agent, Hillary Clinton is a superior private citizen (leave her alone), Russian bots gave us Trump, an old cop is defending democracy, and that political dynasties are good.
In the following sections, I will attempt to lay out the following:
The best evidence of Sally Albright using sockpuppets is the fact that she literally tweeted it out. In March of 2017, Sally was concerned over some changes to Twitter automation software called Buffer. In the process of troubleshooting the issue with Buffer support over Twitter, she tweeted a screenshot of the the Buffer browser extension. The screenshot clearly shows dozens of Twitter account avatars signed in to the service and ready to lay down astroturf. Buffer allows for creating groups of different accounts in order to schedule tweets (or retweets) for different purposes or communities. At the time of the screenshot, Sally had 24 accounts in a group called “Weird Twitter”, 25 in “Hillary”, 6 in “Group 1”, and 14 in “Tier 2”.
Tweets from 64 suspected sockpuppet accounts were collected using the rtweet package for R. Up to 3200 tweets (includeing retweets and replies) were gathered from each target account. The total number of tweets collected was 194377. Data regarding the clients used and individual sockpuppet accounts can be found at the end of the report.
Unsurprisingly, Sally Albright was the most retweeted account overall. She retweeted herself 30939 times from 63 unique sockpuppet accounts. This amounted to 15.6% of the 190k total tweets collected. In the first six weeks of 2018, she managed to retweet herself an average of 559 times per day.
Eric Garland was the second most retweeted account overall, with 2678 retweets originating from 59 unique sockpuppet accounts. Eric Boehlert was the most retweeted Shareblue employee, with 1883 retweets originating from 60 unique accounts.
The wordcloud below shows the 100 most frequently retweeted verified accounts. Font size of each screen name corresponds to the number of retweets received relative to other verified accounts.
In addition to actively amplifying conspiracy theorist Eric Garland, “the Breitbart of the left” also engages in artificially inflating it’s percieved reach and authority by retweeting it’s own writers.
In the following analysis, @SallyAlbright’s massive number of self-retweets were omitted for ease of visual interpretation.
They don't care because Bernie told them identity politics is bad - unless it's white identity politics -so that's what they believe.
— Sally Albright (@SallyAlbright) January 19, 2018
Did they say they hate identity politics and want to focus on the white working class?
— Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) January 27, 2018
The well off white kids becoming multimillionaires by mixing fake socialism with casual racism is so hilarious to me
— Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) January 18, 2018
I think the left is about to go through something similar when they realize that the “energy and enthusiasm” for Bernie's policies came from drunk college kids bused from rally to rally and a legion of Russian bots.
— Sally Albright (@SallyAlbright) January 25, 2018
We tend to focus on the negativity created by anonymous bots and trolls, but there are plenty of people with well-known accounts who are needlessly offensive to others.
— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) February 12, 2018
17/
— AsperGirl (@AsperGirl) January 20, 2018
While Bernie & Sanders progressives, amplified by social media, fatuous media coverage such as we see in this article, and Russian bots & trolls, have appeared to dominate the political landscape, in reality it's the Democrats who are mainstream & consistent who produce votes
And if @jjz1600 and others read the petition at https://t.co/pKSsB671Fr they wouldn’t embarrass themselves personally attacking me. The facts are the facts. The petition is gold. That’s why together we are going to win this fight for the disenfranchised https://t.co/qNkbkYhXYb
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) January 20, 2018
Was so glad @TomPerez removed Zogby from the major committees.
— Bettie Rose (@BettieRose100) January 24, 2018
Hope now that the Unity Reform Committee's suggestions have gone in that it will be eliminated or that the Bernie reps (ALL from anti-Dem orgs Our Revolution & Young Turks) will be removed.
- Clinton Foundation provides farmers with capacity-building and inputs to improve peanut yield and quality. Acceso-Haiti also purchases from farmers at favorable prices, tests them for quality assurance, and sells them to large buyers. https://t.co/4EL8tQVwi9 — Mr. Weeks ✊🏽 (@MrDane1982) January 16, 2018
Your daily reminder that Hillary was beating Sanders so badly in 2016 primary, that millions just stayed home.
— Sanders has 1% odds of passing his agenda. Insane. (@AntiSocialstPAC) January 19, 2018
Why take the time w/ 99% odds HRC will be the nom?
BS got EVERY vote possible. With a real turnout, she would have beat him by 20 points @BravenakBlog @SallyAlbright
next week?
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) January 24, 2018
Schumer: Wall is back on the table
Trump: I'll take it!!
So much depends on the next few weeks.
— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) January 22, 2018
Right now, voters blame Trump and congressional GOP for the shutdown. But missteps of strategy or messaging by Dems might flip that around.
We need to make sure the people know we want this shutdown to end and we want a deal in good faith.
This is why I am completely confident that Bernie is completely unqualified.
— Bravenak Wonderbitch (@BravenakBlog) January 18, 2018
Once a movement decides that the oppressed are the ‘real oppressors’ and decides to vanquish the already marginalized, it's leader has failed. Bernie is a failure.
Bernie is the used car salesman of socialism
— Sanders has 1% odds of passing his agenda. Insane. (@AntiSocialstPAC) January 15, 2018
Joe Kennedy III: Let Camelot Rise Again https://t.co/NRHfw7K3Mx pic.twitter.com/NVPWKRzlxg
— Rich Wilkins (@TheRichWilkins) January 31, 2018
99% of the posts made by the sockpuppet accounts were automated retweets using Buffer. The following plot shows the retweet frequency of the sockpuppet accounts. In the past month, the total number of retweets was 132773, for an average of 4200 per day. However, the number of retweets frequently reached over 6000 per day and went up to a maximum of just shy of 8000 retweets per day. Overall, Shareblue’s astroturfing campaign has the capacity to produce upwards of 50k retweets per week. It is important to note that this is all done in-house with a single person using software that costs $200 per month and fake accounts.
The plot below shows the retweet frequency timeseries separated by individual accounts during the last month.
The following plot shows the rate at which eight commonly retweeted verified accounts were retweeted over the past month.
The following plot shows the rate at which eight commonly retweeted unverified accounts were retweeted over the past month.
Tweets from each of the 64 accounts were primarily sent with Buffer except for 2 accounts which used RoundTeam.