Nobody Talks Like This: Meet 50 AI-Powered Propaganda Accounts in Sudan’s Social Media War

1/ Propaganda botnet alert! About 50 accounts, tweeting in English & Arabic, have pushed out thousands of posts about #Sudan’s war over the past few months. Almost all certainly using genAI, all pushing a pro-UAE, anti-SAF & anti Muslim (Brotherhood) narrative. #disinformation
2/ They all follow the same script:
> Blame Burhan, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood for Sudan’s suffering.
> Praise the UAE for “stability” and “humanitarian aid.”
> Wrap it all in moral language about peace, tolerance, and unity.
3/ Much of the phrasing is synthetic: with odd, weird idioms, and em dashes. Classic traces of Chat GPT or another LLM agent. The slogans repeat across accounts:
e.g. “Brotherhood’s Butler”, “Brotherhood in Uniform”, “Ministry of Brotherhood Enforcement”, “Sudan bleeds”
4/ Many of the accounts have the same generic bios, often with emojis, all giving a techno-bro, gulf futurism vibe. Some are brand new accounts, others are old accounts that have been scrubbed. Most have Arabic sounding names.
5/ The ones that kill me are the ‘quirky’ ones, like Mansoor “DesertMosaic” Al Hosani and Majed “DesertDiplomat” AlMansoori.
Literally 0% of the people on the planet talk like that.
You can quote me on that, or I’m not Marc “DesertSh*tPoster” Jones
6/ The network has been producing an average of around 30 tweets per day over the three months (excluding retweets). As you can see, almost all accounts use ‘Twitter Web App”, which is anomalous, and usually a good further indicator of a bot network
7/ The overall engagement seems to be around 137,000 impressions. Again, it is not clear who is seeing these posts, but the network seems to focus on replying to influencers.
People do engage with the accounts though, with many accusing them of being bots
8/ The network follows the 80:20 formula (with 80% of posts meant to be generic, humanising RTs, and 20% more political propaganda about Sudan). I am not sure of the exact ratios. A lot of posts on AI hype, sport, racing, marketing etc.
9/ A wild element of the network is that it promotes right-wing accounts and institutions who promote “Islamic takeover” narratives. These accounts have retweeted IslamInvasion, Turning Point, Dave Atherton to name but a few!
10/ Sometimes they seem to play both sides (not unusual in influence operations but usually not the same accounts). Here one of the accounts rejects myths about Muslim no go zones in UK, while retweeting Islam Invasion.
11/ So while the core narratives focus on Sudan, and the Muslim Brotherhood, a not insignificant secondary strand seems to want to emphasise the dangers of so-called MB attempts to Islamizes Europe, a trope that we see becoming increasing common via the likes of @amjadt25 et al
12/ The AI does lead to some funny moments though. Here’s “Saleh Neuron Network” interacting with an account from Somaliland. Note how word for word he copies the phrase ‘abtirisiin iyo taarikh’ (lineage and history). So nonchalant. Fair play Saleh Neuron Network
13/ So if you see Mansoor ‘DesertMosaic’ weighing in on Sudan while retweeting Tommy Robinson, maybe take it with a grain of salt. The future of information warfare is here, and it’s somehow both dystopian and deeply stupid. Stay vigilant out there. The bots certainly are