1\/ Propaganda botnet alert! About 50 accounts, tweeting in English & Arabic, have pushed out thousands of posts about #Sudan\u2019s war over the past few months. Almost all certainly using genAI, all pushing a pro-UAE, anti-SAF & anti Muslim (Brotherhood) narrative. #disinformation
\n2\/ They all follow the same script:
\n> Blame Burhan, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood for Sudan\u2019s suffering.
\n> Praise the UAE for \u201cstability\u201d and \u201chumanitarian aid.\u201d
\n> Wrap it all in moral language about peace, tolerance, and unity.
\n3\/ 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:
\ne.g. \u201cBrotherhood\u2019s Butler\u201d, \u201cBrotherhood in Uniform\u201d, \u201cMinistry of Brotherhood Enforcement\u201d, \u201cSudan bleeds\u201d
\n4\/ 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.
\n5\/ The ones that kill me are the \u2018quirky\u2019 ones, like Mansoor \u201cDesertMosaic\u201d Al Hosani and Majed \u201cDesertDiplomat\u201d AlMansoori.
\nLiterally 0% of the people on the planet talk like that.
\nYou can quote me on that, or I\u2019m not Marc \u201cDesertSh*tPoster\u201d Jones
\n6\/ 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 \u2018Twitter Web App\u201d, which is anomalous, and usually a good further indicator of a bot network
\n7\/ 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.
\nPeople do engage with the accounts though, with many accusing them of being bots
\n8\/ 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.
\n9\/ A wild element of the network is that it promotes right-wing accounts and institutions who promote \u201cIslamic takeover\u201d narratives. These accounts have retweeted IslamInvasion, Turning Point, Dave Atherton to name but a few!
\n10\/ 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.
\n11\/ 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
\n12\/ The AI does lead to some funny moments though. Here\u2019s \u201cSaleh Neuron Network\u201d interacting with an account from Somaliland. Note how word for word he copies the phrase \u2018abtirisiin iyo taarikh\u2019 (lineage and history). So nonchalant. Fair play Saleh Neuron Network
\n13\/ So if you see Mansoor \u2018DesertMosaic\u2019 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\u2019s somehow both dystopian and deeply stupid. Stay vigilant out there. The bots certainly are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
1\/ Propaganda botnet alert! About 50 accounts, tweeting in English & Arabic, have pushed out thousands of posts about #Sudan\u2019s 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 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":57460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57461,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57459\/revisions\/57461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}