Respected journalist and poll expert Patrick Ruffini sensationally exposed Donald Trump’s Twitter following as being full of ‘bots’ – fake, automated accounts that are paid for and used to spread propaganda or advertising, in a mechanized way.
Designed to give Trump the appearance of momentum, these accounts, many of which have recently been created, tweet and re-tweet pro-Trump slogans until, by sheer force of numbers, their messaging gets noticed by actual human beings.
Bots are not normally allowed by Twitter. The social network could not immediately be reached for comment.
After Ruffini tweeted a series of posts and graphs appearing to show that thousands of fake, ‘egg’ accounts were being commercially employed to give Trump the air of massive online support, Trump campaign manager Dan Scavino appeared to give the story the nod.
Thank you @SUNYPlattsburgh– Dr. Shakuntala Rao- my FAV comm professor! Miss you all!! https://t.co/hY8otzyOrC pic.twitter.com/DkKSUCAq1m
— Daniel Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) April 11, 2016
Scavino tweeted out a video from an account that, Ruffini alleged, was ‘running the Trump spambots’ – “MacroChip,” which uses the Twitter handle @Shelly4Trump.
This account also tweets out racism. Dan Scavino had tweeted out video from a Nazi account:
https://twitter.com/Shelly4Trump/status/718997317802549248
Ruffini noted in a series of tweets:
.@WDFx2EU, a Trump account that has 89.6k followers, has generated 626k mentions & didn’t exist on 3/1.
The Trumpbot toolkit includes identity theft, Pro-Trump accounts copying legit profiles and RTing propaganda.
465 Twitter users collectively urged people to complain to the FCC about Cruz robocalls.
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) April 8, 2016
These "users" have collectively generated 1.786M tweets over the last 30 days.
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) April 8, 2016
These 465 accounts generated 411K tweets about Trump over the last 30 days.
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) April 8, 2016
This group also collectively retweeted @DanScavino 13,000 times.
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) April 8, 2016
@PatrickRuffini If only they could train their fire on GOP delegates, huh? "Trump's Bot Army"…
— Joshua Green (@JoshuaGreen) April 8, 2016
Ruffini noted that the fake complaints against Ted Cruz to the FCC were scrubbed when he outed the botnet.
Well, well, it appears that all instances of that Cruz FCC tweet that I called out have been scrubbed from the Internet.
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) April 8, 2016
Dan Scavino could not immediately be reached for comment.
