alt Hacker News> Once they've gotten enough real engagement that the algorithm thinks they're real people, they can pivot to something entirely unrelated to the political controversy they pushed. Change name, change style, suddenly the victim follows an account they don't remember but gives interesting advice on crypto investments.
bingo.
you need a trail of real-looking accounts. not just for posting, too, but also to link to, or retweet, or like, etc., in ways that get algorithms to put stuff on the top of a feed.
there may be only one actual account pushing the marketing or propaganda, but you need 5k more to upvote or share -- and those accounts can be just random AI slop or reposts of something. take the top replies of a popular post and shorten it, then post it a day or two later. or repost the most popular generic post of last month, etc.
You don't actually need real looking accounts. Almost all of this stuff is done with the most superficial and obvious accounts.
You don't need any reputation at all because the sites do very little actual work to block literal nation state level information warfare campaigns (because that would cost money and reduce their metrics)
You also don't need any reputation because the real humans who will be boosting your false narrative or "information" are the type that take someone else telling them "No, that's fake because <reason>" to be high quality evidence that it is "The real truth THEY don't want you to know"
Like, these accounts will quite literally only be active from 9-5 Moscow time despite being "In the US", and yet that is apparently not a strong enough signal for companies to target them for review or bans?