Dear confused journalists: I found the bots you have been looking for. They amplify trolls. They impersonate. They spam. They are funded by oligarchs. What more could you want in a story?

And unlike @SecureDemocracy, I have actually shown my work. Gather round.
First things first. Here are the accounts in question. They posted nearly 600 links to @Sharebluearticles from Jan. 22-28th

@SecureDemocracy says they don't this because they would rather have us watch their snazzy dashboard while troll masters and bots continue to flourish. 🤔
Let's dig in. All of these posts were made using @Buffer. Buffer allows users to post the identical tweet (or retweet) on up to 150 separate accounts with a single click. It's called Buffer because it allows you to queue up posts to go out according to a programmable schedule.
Scheduling of the buffer queue is important because it can be programed to emulate a human twitter user. A good way to get favs while sleeping in. Obviously, one can still go overboard with it, as can be seen here. This was annoying and it continued for more than 24 hours.
One of the accounts that was constantly showing up was @DruidCityMedia, a PR firm founded by @SallyAlbright. 

Could all this be related?
🤦‍♀️She just tweeted it out!
Lets see what her bots have been up to.

Lots of Shareblue astroturfing.
Amplifying Game Theorist @EricGarland is one of their primary duties. Odd.
Some of the people they impersonate include a Olympic ice skater and a tragically deceased woman from Florida.
Some people on Twitter seem to get really upset when I have pointed out that they get amplified by bots.
Some try to deal with it by "actually laughing."
Adam, he had a minor meltdown here.
Others choose to ignore. Or block in the case of @EricBoehler and @NeeraTanden 
In the spirit of openness and education, you can explore, visualize, and download the data from ~250k retweets from these sockpuppets here.
Some of my favorites:
You can read the original report here.
I also analyzed the database of 'malicious Russian linked tweets" from the IRA troll farm here.
This was the most interesting finding
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