Tale of a viral fraud

A Twitter account that claimed to be a liberal U.S. voter in a blue state and gained popularity in 2020 via misleading political tweets may have been operated from overseas

none of this is true, but that didn’t stop it from going viral

In January 2020, an allegedly US-based liberal Twitter account named @Baligubadle1 appeared and quickly gained popularity among anti-Trump #Resistance accounts. Over the course of the 2020 election cycle, this account picked up a variety of prominent followers and frequently went viral by posting misinformation, rumors, and assorted outrage bait. @Baligubadle1’s popular falsehoods included rumors about former U.S. Attorney General William Barr visiting Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, an assertion that convicted rapist Brock Turner was scheduled to speak at the 2020 Republican National Convention, and a claim that Republican Senator Ted Cruz was “cheering from the bunker” while U.S. Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher. (In reality, Sicknick died of a stroke following being pepper sprayed at the January 6th, 2021 insurrection; his assailant was eventually sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison.)

based on these tweets, one might think @Baligubadle1 was a U.S. citizen

The @Baligubadle1 account regularly claimed to have voted in U.S. elections, implying that the operator of the account was an adult U.S. citizen. The account holder allegedly voted for Democrats in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, and generally expressed support for Democratic candidates for other offices.

based on these tweets, one might think @Baligubadle1 lived in a U.S. state (of course, there is that weird time zone discrepancy…)

On multiple occasions, @Baligubadle1 also posted tweets claiming or implying residence in a U.S. state, in the form of both general references to “blue states” and a specific reference to voting in Wisconsin. There is a discrepancy, however: the @Baligubadle1 account reliably marked midnight in U.S. Eastern Time, but the entirety of the state of Wisconsin is in U.S. Central Time.

nothing to see here, just multiple Twitter accounts with the same profile photo

Adding to the cause for suspicion, the profile photo used by the then-new @Baligubadle1 account was also used by several other (now suspended) Twitter accounts. The accounts other than @Baligubadle1 that used the image appear to have been spam accounts. (Hat tip to Twitter user @ushadrons for documenting the existence of these accounts back in 2020.)

At some point between September 2021 and November 2022, Twitter permanently suspended the @Baligubadle1 account (which remains suspended at the time of this writing) and that would appear to have been that.

ironically, this reply acknowledges that the @Baligubadle1 account was in fact spouting utter lies

On October 27th, 2022, Twitter was purchased by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and under his leadership the platform began reinstating some accounts that had previously been permanently banned. @Baligubadle1 was not among the resurrected accounts, however, and not everyone was pleased by this outcome. A Twitter account by the name of @cwyyell replied to Elon Musk objecting to the suspension on November 22nd, 2022 (and in the process acknowledged, probably unintentionally, the @Baligubadle1 account’s dishonesty).

based on profile location and tweets, the @cwyyell account is based in Malindi, Kenya

@cwyyell, the Twitter user who complained about the suspension of the @Baligubadle1 account, is familiar with the town of Baligubadle, Somaliland

Unlike the @Baligubadle1 account, which claimed to be a U.S. voter based in the United States, the operator of the @cwyyell account has repeatedly claimed to be located in various places in East Africa, usually Malindi, Kenya. In an interesting coincidence, @cwyyell has apparently spent time in the town of Baligubadle, Somaliland, which shares a name with the banned @Baligubadle1 Twitter account.

in a total coincidence that probably isn’t a coincidence at all, @cwyyell stopped tweeting at the same time @baligubadle1 started

The @cwyyell account was created in May 2018 and continued to tweet with some regularity up until the creation of the @Baligubadle1 account, at which point the @cwyyell account went almost totally silent until late 2022, when @Baligubadle1 was no longer active. Although this could simply be a remarkable coincidence of timing, it also suggests the possibility that the same person or entity ran both accounts and decided to switch from a Kenya-based to a U.S.-based persona for the 2020 U.S. election season. The @cwyyell account’s objection to the @Baligubadle1 account’s suspension and @cwyyell’s apparent familiarity with the actual town of Baligubadle are additional data points consistent with this explanation. An operator on a different continent would also explain the @Baligubadle1 account’s lack of familiarity with North American time zones.

@cwyyell and @Baligubadle1 had the same taste in repetitive tweets

In addition to the aforementioned coincidences and anomalies, the @Baligubadle1 and @cwyyell accounts also displayed remarkably similar tweet structure habits. Both accounts used the same tweet formats over and over, such as:

• X is the Y of Z (e.g., “Chuck Todd is the Jacob Wohl of Ben Shapiro”)

• X is the reason why abortion should be/remain/stay legal (e.g., “Rand Paul is why abortion should stay legal”)

Although these tweet formats are by no means exclusive to these two accounts, their consistent use by both accounts is yet another parallel.

a Baligubadle account appeared on Spoutible in February, at the same time @cwyyell was tweeting about setting up a Spoutible account

In February 2023, the @cwyyell Twitter account tweeted at Spoutible CEO Christopher Bouzy about difficulties creating a Spoutible account. Although no account with the name cwyyell exists on Spoutible, an empty Baligubadle account was created there around the same time, sporting the same profile photo as the now-suspended @Baligubadle1 Twitter account. It’s always possible that this is yet another coincidence in a growing set of coincidences, but it’s one more data point that is consistent with the hypothesis that the now-suspended @Baligubadle1 Twitter account was operated by the same person or entity as the @cwyyell account.

Although there are some differences, both the behavior of the @Baligubadle1 account and its popular reception are reminiscent of the recently-suspended “Erica Marsh” (@EricaReport) Twitter account. Both accounts built their audiences in large part by tweeting melodramatic misinformation and outrage bait, and when their false claims were challenged, both had highly partisan followers willing to rush to their defense and attack the messenger. Both also followed very few accounts relative to the size of their own audiences (and in some cases unfollowed large numbers of accounts they had previously followed), creating the illusion of celebrity. The suspension of the Erica Marsh account has made some waves in the media recently; hopefully this attention translates into heightened public awareness of these social media manipulation tactics going forward.