Duplicating Deceit: Inauthentic Behavior Among Indian Misinformation Duplicators on X/Twitter

TL;DR

This study examines inauthentic duplication of misinformation on Twitter in India, revealing that most accounts involved are not bots but participate in coordinated campaigns using account clusters to spread false or abusive content.

Contribution

Introduces TweeXster, a novel framework for detecting and analyzing misinformation duplication campaigns, highlighting the prevalence of coordinated non-bot accounts in false information spread.

Findings

Less than 1% of accounts show bot-like behavior

Identification of clusters involved in repeated misinformation dissemination

Revealed coordinated campaigns using account duplication strategies

Abstract

This paper investigates inauthentic duplication on social media, where multiple accounts share identical misinformation tweets. Leveraging a dataset of misinformation verified by AltNews, an Indian fact-checking organization, we analyze over 12 million posts from 5,493 accounts known to have duplicated such content. Contrary to common assumptions that bots are primarily responsible for spreading false information, fewer than 1\% of these accounts exhibit bot-like behavior. We present TweeXster, a framework for detecting and analyzing duplication campaigns, revealing clusters of accounts involved in repeated and sometimes revived dissemination of false or abusive content.