Spam in the firehose, part II
A closer look at a growing astroturf network on Bluesky
A recent article on this blog discussed multiple groups of accounts identified by scanning the Bluesky firehose for repeated biographies, including a network of over a thousand accounts with biographies beginning with the phrase “passionate about”. Further exploration of this network (along with additional bulk account creations in the intervening time) reveals that this spam network is substantially larger than it appeared at first glance. The accounts in the network, which were inactive at the time they were first observed, have also begun reposting specific posts en masse.
At present, this spam network consists of at least 15238 Bluesky accounts, all created on or after November 20th, 2024, mostly in large batches. A comparison between this dataset and previously harvested data indicates that at least 1283 additional accounts belonging to the network have been suspended, bringing the total number to (at least) 16521. None of the accounts in the network have more than a handful of followers, and none have posted as of yet, apart from reposts. This network frequently reuses the same profile photos for multiple accounts, as seen in the image at the top of this article.
The spam accounts’ biographies are extremely repetitive, with some biographies duplicated in their entirety by dozens of accounts. The most common biography at the time of this writing is “passionate about exploring innovative ideas in the field of gaming”, used by 69 accounts. Not all of the duplicate biographies begin with “passionate about”; other regularly occurring opening phrases include “enthusiastic about”, “dedicated to”, and “focused on”.
All of the spam accounts’ biographies, including those that are duplicated in their entirety, appear to be assembled from several pools of shorter repeated phrases. In some cases, these phrases are glued together into longer phrases or sentences to generate a biography; in others, the shorter phrases are separated by pipe symbols, such as “building dreams | lifelong explorer”. Some of the assembled biographies are grammatically awkward, such as “exploring the art of art and cultural exploration”, currently used by 47 accounts.
Although none of the accounts in the network have posted any content of their own as of yet, most have reposted one or more posts. The accounts reposted by the network are an eclectic mix, including political (mostly liberal) accounts, aggregator/meme accounts, media, and NSFW adult accounts. One of the stranger accounts amplified by the network is @real-liamneeson.bsky.social which, despite the inclusion of “real” in the handle, does not appear to belong to the “Award Wining [sic] Northern Irish Movie Actor” Liam Neeson.
The accounts in the spam network have also followed a number of accounts en masse. As with the accounts reposted by the network, the accounts followed by the network are quite varied, and include the aforementioned fake Liam Neeson account. It is presently unclear how the operators of the network choose which accounts to follow and repost; for the most part, the target accounts do not appear in the same starter packs and do not have much in common beyond having been amplified by the same spam network. Note that (in most cases) there is currently no evidence that the people reposted or followed by the spam accounts paid for or solicited the bogus engagement, or for that matter are even aware of it.
There is, however, an interesting and suspicious outlier among the accounts followed by the network, in the form of a 12-day old account with the handle @nextlevelpromo.bsky.social hawking unspecified social media promotion services. This account has just over a hundred followers, almost all of which are part of the spam network, and has been periodically replying to random users with offers of a “shout out/promotion” or “a bigger audience”. While the nature of the promotions offered by @nextlevelpromo.bsky.social is presently unclear, it would not be surprising to learn that they involve the large spam network that the @nextlevelpromo.bsky.social account itself has followers from.
