This is indicative of how bot campaigns typically work: Bots are not interested in preaching to the choir.
HIGHLY SYNCHRONISED POSTING OF COMMENTS
Posting of the comments was found to be highly synchronised, particularly between 10am and 3pm on Apr 26, when the bot accounts as a whole were found to have posted comments most frequently.
It was common to see many different fake accounts commenting within minutes of each other on the same post right after it went up.
For example, a 10-minute window of around 2.35pm to 2.45pm on Apr 26 saw 90 distinct fake accounts post comments.
There was also a burst of 157 inauthentic comments from 10pm to 11pm on Apr 25, right when news of the government’s statement broke.
The bot tactics here reflect attempts to align with local audience attention, and to influence public opinion overnight through setting narratives by morning, and then reinforcing them during the day.
Analysis of the timings of the comments revealed orchestrated burst patterns. The bot network could mobilise at least 10 or more distinct accounts within a 10-minute window repeatedly.
TOP BOT AND SUPERSPREADERS
The top bot detected in this campaign is Facebook user “Angeline Tan”, who posted 71 times in a four-and-a-half hour span between 8.19pm on Apr 26 and 12.54am on Apr 27.
The user’s 71 comments were posted on just two CNA posts uploaded on Apr 26 – a video post of Mr Wong’s comments during a press conference on the foreign interference, and another earlier video post of Mr Singh’s comments to the media on the same matter.
A handful of inauthentic accounts were also identified as superspreaders because they appeared to comment on each of these posts, and their Facebook connections show that they are affiliated to a large number of suspicious accounts that also posted similar messages, also known as “co-commenting”.
This could mean that they may be the main operators of these bot networks, or that automated bots take the cue from them.
