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today's video is just a portion of what
has become a much broader investigation
but for right now it feels like the
proper way to cover things long story
short I have been working on creating a
fake identity online for social media
which includes AI generated activity
photos voice and even video the original
purpose is to demonstrate my proposed
inflection point where nothing you see
online ever can be trusted which is a
horrifying prospect that rapidly
approaches every single day as we make
strides in AI content generation that we
are holistically unprepared for as a
nation or even a species suffice it to
say I'm an AI pessimist if you will
right now but the scope of my social
experiment rapidly expanded beyond the
simple Prospect of manufacturing a
digital Persona despite that angle being
very much successful and yielding
extremely interesting results so far
what started as a web of social media
purchases which I'll detail in just a
minute turned into an examination of
what might actually be one of the
largest bot networks on all of Twitter
with an entire underground ecosystem and
economy of compromised account resale
bought it metrics and thousands of
online people businesses rappers B and C
tier celebrities or actors minor
political figures news agency
impersonators and more which are either
built on compromised profiles bought it
in totality by the network I
specifically am tracking verified by
Twitter blue some of them yet seem to be
falsified completely or some other form
of very obvious inauthentic activity
basically I started by trying to prove
that AI is now a threat to the online
world because it can seamlessly craft
fake identities and I ended by creating
research burner accounts to track a bot
network two layers down through mutual
followers and uncovered the largest
continuous example of underground social
media activity that I've ever seen let's
dive in it all started with an idea take
the newly exploding image generation
capabilities of AI and craft a Persona
my theory was that if done properly I
could create a person generate images of
that person create social media for them
even use their voice if necessary
through a program called 11 Labs
purchase bought traffic for those
profiles in order to create a sense of
authority and legitimacy and trick the
world into believing that I was real
allowing for a spectacular reveal later
down the line if it was successful that
video is still possible actually it's
likely to happen in the future owing to
relative success but contrary to my
initial plan I started to get knocked
off track pretty quickly let me explain
the very first thing I did was come up
with a name an inside joke even because
if my ultimate intention was to go
public with all this I had to make it at
least slightly entertaining here's what
I came up with Cynthia Talbot synth
bought Cynthia Talbot was an aspiring
marketing executive she was a former
model who had had her accounts
compromised and all her photos were to
be generated using a platform called
Deep agency I won't lie this was
actually kind of painful it's a great
service it really is but it takes time
to sit there generating and regenerating
images of a synthetic blonde woman who
needs to have plausibly similar facial
features and bone structure in order to
pass but he here's what I came up with I
haven't used all of these so far I could
do a few more Finishing Touch edits in
Photoshop if I needed to not anymore I
guess this particular identity is now
burned by making it public when I think
about it but after a couple lengthy
sessions I was able to create a library
of what seemed to be authentic looking
photographs that might pass for a real
person successful next I had to get the
accounts up and running first was Gmail
to tie everything to as a central Hub
then came Facebook but I wanted to add a
little bit more impact so I took to the
internet and started to scout for
buyable social media accounts with large
pre-existing followings this is where
one could argue that I was engaging with
an unethical system and that would most
likely be true but for a side project of
mine as I conclude this particular
version of my social experiment I'll be
making it a personal project to get the
accounts returned to their original
owners I don't even know if that's
possible I have no idea how or who to
contact at Microsoft Twitter and
Facebook to do this but I'm working on
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the channel anyway back on task as I
browsed I started to find that there was
absolutely no shortage of offers in fact
there were dozens of sites thousands of
sellers probably millions of accounts
and I could basically pick and choose
what I wanted and theoretically I could
choose how it was crafted I'm not going
to advertise the specific websites that
I used I think ethically I should avoid
the prospect of this becoming an actual
guide on how to do this stuff because
it's prevalent enough already without me
making it worse even though it's not
exactly hard and you could be up and
running in about 45 minutes ish if you
wanted to but I used four different
websites there were three vendors and
one metric service that I engaged with
and obviously before doing so I emulated
my payment details through a service
called privacy which basically lets you
use burner credit cards of sorts or
debit cards that are tied into your real
bank account to protect your information
for obvious reasons I would never be
using my actual credit cards to engage
with a project like this through these
vendors some purchases were better some
were worse of course I managed to buy
one Twitter account with a little over
60 000 followers at the time one
instagram account with a little over I
think a hundred thousand followers and
then another Twitter account with about
40 000 followers this time but that one
had a few issues and was a freshly
compromised account where someone had
been actively using the email address
until just a couple days prior so
obviously I was never going to use that
and I'm just trying to get that returned
to the person who originally owned it
long story short in order to get the
first two accounts I had to VPN myself
somewhere else log into my now useless
burner account on binance the crypto
exchange from right when binance first
got started send them some of my random
[ __ ] coins that I no longer care about
to one of the vendors in what
effectively amounted to a trust trade
which he did honor by the way and then
get the credentials back which came
complete with the social media login
credentials as well as the backup email
credentials they did technically provide
an escrow service of sorts but since I
was just getting rid of all my wiped out
crypto from like six or seven years ago
that's right crypto Bros I was into
Bitcoin since long before any of you
even knew what it was I survived gox
without losing any of my money I was in
it before binance and FTX even existed
so don't start with me on how
misunderstood and great crypto is or how
it fixes all the Trad five problems
because it doesn't it now is one of the
systemic problems and the entire
Community should be completely ashamed
of what they have allowed their beloved
industry to become sorry a bit of a rant
there but honestly it's necessary to
call them out where was I so after
vpning my ass all over the world getting
details setting up accounts changing
credentials you name it I was ready to
start my foray into the digital project
of babysitting a social media identity
of sorts that was completely generated
by AI this is where I need to do a bit
of a short summary because the long form
would be its own entire video it is a
video I am intending to make in the
future but for right now it goes a
little bit like this Facebook
unexpectedly is by far the best platform
when it comes to moderating inauthentic
or bought behavior and flagging fake
accounts by far it's not even close
however that's a double-edged sword
within hours of creating my account and
populating it with AI generated photos
even just a few of them I was receiving
messages from real men who thought I was
real and were asking me how I was or how
we might get to know each other or [ __ ]
like that that was a shock because you
wouldn't catch me dead messaging a
profile that was created that very same
day filled out all the info within two
hours had zero friends and three
pictures that at the time weren't even
the best ones I managed to generate and
had multiple glaringly obvious flaws in
essence the virality and prevalence of
romance scamming facilitated by Ai and
fake pictures that are crafted with
language output algorithms or whatever
it is is about to go parabolic romance
scams or shazu pan as they're called
also known as the pig butchering is
predominantly located in Asia and
requires crime syndicates to spend
exorbitant amounts of money on actual
photo shoots with real girls who travel
to different areas and craft stylized
identities to Target specific victims
there are even training manuals on this
or script manuals detailed manuals that
provide a dedicated structure to a
purpose-driven Workforce as they
approach trick and then destroy their
victims all around the world it's an
industry with AI the cost the relative
cost right instead of costing thousands
of dollars to do photo shoots with girls
and ship them around the world so you
can get photos in front of landmarks
like there's some pretty dedicated stuff
that they do but right now facilitated
by AI the cost is falling to roughly
twenty dollars a month where anyone can
do it they can craft a fake persona with
photorealistic detail if they know how
to prompt the AI
brace yourselves from what I found
Facebook is Ground Zero for that within
hours messages started popping up and I
can't actually show any of this right
now because like I said Facebook though
anything but perfect is by far the best
social media platform at identifying and
preventing impersonators or bot activity
I was suspended within a week on that
account where a government issued ID
verification was needed to unlock the
account and every further account I made
with the same credentials as Cynthia
Talbot even if I used my VPN and other
email addresses and things like that and
made moderate efforts to circumvent it
obviously I probably could have tried to
fake a license or a government-issued ID
but that's just not a line I'm willing
to cross obviously so that was a dead
end as soon as Facebook really had me
nailed down and wasn't allowing me to
make a fake AI profile I was kind of
stuck when it came to that particular
platform now part of why that happened
is probably my own fault as I started to
get messages from random men I would
reply to them with a standard response
so something like this account is being
run as a social experiment it was a
really clean cut and I find myself
wondering if that made some of them
report me maybe they filed a complaint
that I was fake because they had
messaged a brand new profile and it
turned out to be a journalist experiment
which is probably embarrassing for them
but honestly I'll probably never know
precisely what happened it is what it is
the point is Facebook is the best at
sniffing out bot activity and preventing
it so far from my research with their
heavy focus on tying people to their
real names for Better or For Worse
that's up to you but it's also Ground
Zero for romance scamming and it was
very clear that with maybe a couple
weeks I could easily very easily have
had victims on the hook with nothing
other than AI generated images and maybe
some Voice still that was just the
beginning next I began cultivating the
Twitter account that I had purchased but
this led me to an interesting
realization the Twitter account was
completely comprised of bought it
accounts with fake profiles this was not
organically grown which well I wasn't
explicitly led to believe that it would
be but it it seemed to insinuate that
this was an organically grown matured
and aged profile or built over time
through tweetdeck or something like that
no no not true this was a profile that
had been scrubbed and then bought it to
a high number of followers in order to
specifically be resold to someone like
me honestly I respect the hustle I knew
what I was getting into but with zero
engagement a follower count dropping by
the day as Twitter banned incremental
numbers of bots here and there it wasn't
really going to do me much good
thankfully I actually was getting
traction with AI generated garbage
tweets I was gaining followers following
other people back and within the first
few days I could see a decent number of
legitimate accounts begin following me
not small accounts either the speed and
frequency that legitimate accounts would
enter my Orbit was much faster than
anything I could ever have expected or
cultivated from an actual fresh account
with no prior history on the platform
and I viewed the experiment to be a slow
burn a very very slow burn but
ultimately it was probably going to be
successful then everything changed I had
a realization this account was obviously
bought it there was the evidence right
in front of me of course undeniably but
how could I explore it perusing the
follower list I saw that before a
certain point in time almost every
single account was a zero follower
random string of numbers in the username
obvious bot profile that followed
hundreds of other accounts idea what if
I made a burner account and followed all
of Cynthia Talbot's fake followers what
if I then used that research account as
a sort of Geiger counter if you will to
detect other profiles that had been
hacked or stolen repurposed bought it
then sold and thus if it worked I had a
video this part's very very important to
engage with these Services I protected
myself and I have no intention of making
enemies over this what I am about to
show you is just a slice of the
Perpetual war between bot networks and
social media Giants and while the window
stays open because it is temporarily
open now that I found found this way to
explore the bot Network and again it's
very temporary I'm going to be removed
from these accounts pretty soon or I'm
going to lose access at any point in
time but while it's there I want to
explore it I very much want to show the
extent of how far this goes and
reiterate my point that pretty soon here
nothing literally nothing you see online
or on social media will be trustworthy
in the slightest not the information and
especially not the people to properly
delve into it I needed some kind of
formula the simplest thing I came up
with was create the burner follow
Cynthia Talbot's followers and then
check how far the botnet goes by
exploring the list of other accounts
that they follow now ideally I would do
this with all 60-ish thousand of her
fake followers to get the best results
and the most cross references and hits
but I started running into a bit of a
problem I would get locked out for hours
at a time if I followed too many
accounts too fast on Twitter eventually
getting my entire research account
locked completely after reaching
something like 660 followed accounts
with zero of my own followers My
rudimentary system wasn't going to work
at scale and I wasn't going to spend
months on end just checking in and
following five or ten accounts every
couple hours but honestly it didn't
matter 600 accounts was a perfectly fine
base level test to use for the video as
long as I was smart with my other
identifying factors here's the basic
system I came up with let's walk through
it very straightforward this is my
research burner account it's following
about 600 people which are exclusively
drawn from the followers of my AI driven
purchased account called Cynthia Talbot
now those followers are all Bots and I
know this because of a specific set of
criteria first look at the names name
with long string of numbers that's one
point that's worth right that's worth
one sign of a bot next check the
followers and following if it's
following hundreds of people with zero
followers of its own two points sign of
a bot next I check their tweet activity
never liked a single thing retweeted a
single thing or engaged with a single
piece of content ever on Twitter in
their entire lifespan and one point sign
of a bot and lastly date of creation
within the last two months or three
months that's one point as well probably
a bot overall profiles must have had at
least three points at least to be
assumed as a bot and added to the test
pool created recently zero activity and
400 followed accounts with no followers
of its own I would assume that's a bot
name with a massive string of numbers
zero activity created last week I'm
assuming that's a bot you get the idea
it's possible that I have a couple of
false positives in here but it's highly
highly unlikely and the gist of it is
that this is a bot network with tens of
thousands of accounts tied to it that is
spun up and aimed in particular wherever
someone out there wants to make
individual profiles bigger on command
cool 600 Bots from the network as a
basic sample what now now we take any of
these Bots and look at the other
accounts that it has been told to follow
and this is our Target pool of sorts
unlike the boss themselves this is a
list of people that have verifiably
interacted with the bot Network or been
targeted by it and now have high
followers example right here Hunter
Gaylord now to be clear every single
person on this list has interacted with
this bot Network in one way or another
at some point in time it's just a matter
of finding out in what capacity for
Hunter he has 80 000 followers over 40
hits on the bot sample and a creation
date of June 2016. here's how you
evaluate the profile or here at least is
my methodology for evaluating all the
different profiles that I chose first
check the earliest available tweets for
Hunter that's July of 2021 that's a
five-year Gap in his activity very bad
first sign next you check his relative
activity Hunter has 80 000 followers but
gets one or two interactions on all of
his legitimate tweets bad sign and
lastly plugging him into socialblade a
social tracker so words we can see that
Hunter has crazy activity patterns that
make absolutely no sense bottom line I
can't say for certain if this is a
stolen account that was boughted and
resold I can't say whether Hunter is
real and chose to bought his own account
or if someone did it to him but I can
say with absolute certainty that this
Wall Street advisor content host
professional looking guy right here his
social media is 100 percent fake that's
one example there are hundreds of
individual examples per account spread
across tens of thousands of separate
profiles in every single sector of
Twitter's Community Health and Fitness
media crypto especially crypto
traditional Finance relationships Sports
fashion and more here's the next guy
down just right underneath uh whatever
his name was Hunter
drez.eath Twitter blue verified 67 000
followers zero activity it's highly
likely that this account was compromised
stripped botted and is now just sitting
there awaiting sail to whatever person
wants a fresh out of the box crypto
scamming profile that is pre-built to
seem authoritative on Twitter checking
socialblade he hasn't even been indexed
yet because the credentials probably
just got changed recently for reference
this is what a normal social blade
profile should look like this is my now
suspended account because I quoted Game
of Thrones and said all men must die as
a specific commentary on how hilariously
botched Twitter's moderation was at the
time and it's a far cry from anything
you will find on the follower list of my
research account this was organically
grown this is my account again that I
organically grew I know for a fact over
years and is very very easy to identify
when you have a real account that
someone was personally using for let's
say seven years and grew it to like 18
20 000 followers versus an account that
got bought it I mean it's it's night and
day very distinctly different just one
problem though this is where I get
bogged down collectively there are
thousands of accounts that have been
hacked wiped bought it resold to whoever
owns them now where those accounts are
pretending to be media Outlets CEOs
analysts Traders gurus and more I could
sit here and give examples all day for
hours and hours straight probably for
weeks but I'll contain it to a few of
the more interesting ones here's some
sort of imposter Media company that just
sprang up targeting Indonesia
eight-month Gap in their history engaged
with the bot Network verifiably
impossibly low metrics freshly wiped on
socialblade most likely hacked wiped
bonded and purchased to launch a fake
company I could be wrong but every
single conceivable sign points to that
being the case here's one Caesar on the
moon web 3 Advocate to the Chinese
people whatever that means Chief
technical officer somewhere Asia head
game starter or something Community
polka dot Ambassador and Technical
advisor joined in December of 2015 but
history only starts in 2022 28 hits on
our tiny little bot Network sample and
freshly wiped credential so that
socialblade has not indexed it most
likely hacked profile wiped botted sold
to someone and here we are with yet
another crypto professional who appeared
out of nowhere here's another one Tom
and options and Futures Trader who
supposedly joined Twitter in 2011
multiple hits on the bot sample 10 000
followers and supposedly a Twitter
veteran from that far back in reality
the account has no tweet history on it
before February of this year with an
absolute torrential downpour of tweets
on March 13th in particular this is most
likely to bury the lack of feed content
as far as possible so no one actually
Scrolls back long enough to see it and
if we check socialblade it's wiped again
because the credentials have been
changed great another fake Financial guy
pretending to be real and definitely
some people out there are buying a lot
of these fake accounts not buying is in
purchasing buying is in following them
and thinking that they're real people
who are giving actual valuable advice
these are imposters these are not real
people how about this Cleopatra
Fitzgerald supposedly a political figure
and mayoral candidate 89 hits on the bot
sample that's pretty high supposedly
joined in 2011 as well in actuality
tweet history only goes to 2021 with
massive spam on specific days in between
with a social blade history only
recently indexed very recently already
losing tens of thousands of followers is
this the real person is it a hacked
account it's definitely a bought it
account 100 with impossible engagement
metrics what is really going on here's
one that says India's leading English
news channel called news x a million
followers joined in 2009 that's an OG
nope impossible metrics enormous swings
and followers to the tune of 400 000
even in a single period with completely
inauthentic patterns maybe not a hacked
account maybe repurposed or wiped or I
don't even know but a million followers
and
transparently bought it and we don't
even know if it belongs to the person
who we don't even know if it's a real
thing behind this another crypto
influencer this time named Ragnar this
guy has hundreds of retweets probably to
bury the fact that his engagement is all
sorts of screwed up and supposedly
joined another one in 2011. strange Gap
in activity since his first content on
the timeline is from July of 2022 a
bunch of hits on our botnet sample which
is the lead indicator and if we check
out socialblade he's just been
systematically losing followers ever
since the account got indexed again most
likely compromised account wiped bonded
heavily sold Presto changeo brand new
crypto influencer hits the scene better
example this guy Amir Twitter blue
verified over a hundred hits on the bot
sample which is a lot joined in March of
2022 but there's a five month gap
between creation date and first tweet
activity socialblade freshly wiped not
indexed yet or sorry unindexed now
because the credentials changed but this
guy has 700 000 followers in less than
one year with less than a hundred
interactions per tweet no this is
basically shooting fish in a barrel it
is blatantly obvious when you look at
pretty much any of these accounts that
they were hacked bought it sold and
turned into a social media imposter of
sorts maybe not all of them some of
these people merely hired the botting
services to give themselves some more
followers but I have collectively found
so far about 340 accounts collectively
holding tens of millions of fake
followers where most of them are clearly
repurposed accounts that no longer
belong to the original owners doctors
analysts Bankers actors rappers
Executives you name it everyone fake
companies that have fake products that
sprang up out of nowhere God knows what
they will do to you when you try to buy
something from them fake news agencies I
don't really even have the words because
seeing it all laid out right in front of
you is kind of sickening a lot of of
people believe that they are interacting
with legitimate people online they see
high metrics and take that as
trustworthy and never dig deeper but the
truth is we have no idea who we are
talking to in the online world ever no
idea none of all social media and I did
run experiments on Facebook Instagram
Twitter and then I happened to also be
kind of an expert on YouTube now over
the years Twitter is by far hands down
the worst when it comes to bot activity
I actually had trouble even getting
Facebook accounts fresh ones for sale
but for Twitter there was a never-ending
torrent of high follower profiles
popping up for sale every single day of
the week what I've discovered here is
just a sample of the bot Network behind
Twitter a small sample at that I believe
that there's many other sections and
that they compartmentalize it so that it
doesn't get banned all at once but rest
assured there's more even though I've
only seen a sample I found most of these
and there are so many more examples that
I obviously just can't include in the
video just from a couple of the profiles
attached to my one research burner
account that only followed about
one percent of the Bots that then follow
Cynthia Talbot right so I've basically
tapped into I don't know between one and
two percent of this bot Network and it's
already in the tens of millions of
followers and Views so take that for
what you will I mean if that's one
percent we're talking a billion views
and a billion bonded followers over the
course of all these different accounts I
mean it's pretty staggering stuff and
I'm not even done going through all of
it yet I don't even know how to catalog
this much data I don't think I have the
capability but the bottom line here is
that there's almost certainly hundreds
of millions of fake views and followers
tied to this one particular Network that
has industrialized the practice of
compromising accounts wiping them
botting them and then selling them
specifically on Twitter to people in
companies who want to cut corners or
scam Their audience here I was under the
impression that Twitter actually wanted
to fix the bot problem which is
absolutely [ __ ] hilarious when you
think about Elon Musk talking about
fixing the bots on Twitter good joke
Elon in the end I started out on this
journey by spending about eight hundred
dollars in attempting to create an AI
generated profile that fooled people
into thinking it was real that part
worked immediately and easily but
ultimately I discovered an even better
topic as I explored the now colossal
underground ecosystem of account selling
and bought it engagement during the
creation of this video I was able to
conduct a couple of different interviews
with dedicated sellers who actually
purvey these accounts or you know had
them as part of their offering some of
them offloading hundreds of accounts per
week many times even earning the bulk of
their income from selling fresh accounts
with no followers but keep in mind I had
to spoof my payment details I had to
spoof my phone number and all of my
other information just to safely
interact with this industry I do not
advise doing this it's against the terms
of service I'm totally fine if they ban
all of my social media accounts I don't
even want to be involved with social
media anymore except for YouTube like I
want to take my distance from it but the
benefits absolutely do not justify the
risk okay this is not something anyone
should be doing it's a thing a lot of
people do you but don't go treating this
as like a tutorial on how to start up a
successful alt identity and get a bunch
of work or scam a bunch of people in
crypto this is just an analysis of the
corrupt destructive piece of [ __ ]
platform that is Twitter however keep in
mind that there is no guarantee on
social media that anything you are
looking at is real that's the underlying
premise of all of this the photos can be
AI we've gone into a world where that's
possible now you can have highly
targeted photos that are constructed
with AI models that look real they're
photorealistic and you're going to be
tricked by this people are going to be
tricked by this the metrics can all be
bought the comments can be bot networks
that are paired with language models
like chat GPT now the gpt4 is out oh my
gosh so basically all of it can be fake
the voices can be fake using something
like 11 Labs which is getting better by
the day and the old school accounts on
social media from like 2011 or 2013 Etc
that are supposed to convey credibility
and authenticity those are part of a
massive underground economy that is
commercialized the practice of building
fake identities with fake followers and
then selling them to people for whatever
they want to use them for be very very
careful that's it if you want support
please check out the links down below
these videos are now requiring some
actual investment to make Beyond just
time on my part such as Consulting from
a few people advice editing services
that I commissioned account purchases in
this case Etc et cetera so hopefully the
results are currently positive and the
community is down for me to keep going
let me know in the comments down below
as always thank you all for watching
there's a few other creators that are
linked in the description as well but
I'll cut it there and stop rambling have
a nice night
thank you
[Music]