High-Profile Covid-19 Twitter Accounts Appear to be Targeted by Conversation Manipulators

If you’re interested in Covid-19 and the Omicron variant then you might be following people like Eric Feigl-Ding, Eric Topol, or BNODesk.

Over the past 10 days I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. Within minutes of any new tweet (from someone with a lot of followers) about Omicron news, or data warning people about the dangers of Omicron, random accounts will reply with sentences like, “Who cares? It’s mild.” (Scroll down for numerous examples of this.)

These random, often faceless accounts, share many similarities. They reply within 2-5 minutes. They don’t have many followers. Most of their tweets are retweets. Their profile pics are cartoons or random photos. Their usernames are often gibberish or appear randomly generated. These people show up out of nowhere on important threads trying to steer the conversation towards the idea that the Omicron variant is mild.

Who are these conversation manipulators and why are they doing this?

The Omicron variant hasn’t been circulating long enough for us to know whether it’s mild or not. During the first outbreak in 2020, there was a span of 34 days from the first reported case of Covid-19 in the UK to the first death. South Africa, where most Omicron cases are right now, has different demographics. Their population skews younger. It’s also summer there. We can’t look at South Africa to predict with 100% certainty what will happen in Europe or North America.

Not enough time has passed for us to know whether Omicron is mild or not. But an army of faceless people want you to believe the Omicron variant is not a danger. Why? What is their goal here? Are they just trolls? Idiots? Do these people actually want Omicron to spread as much as possible?

It’s weird and it makes my skin crawl.

This appears to be an organized attempt at convincing people on Twitter that the Omicron variant is nothing to be worried about. Either that or it’s a hell of a coincidence.

While I don’t know the actual Twitter stats, I suspect that tweets get more eyeballs when they’re fresh. After a few hours the replies pile on and these “Omicron is mild” tweets get lost in the noise, but it doesn’t matter because everyone has moved on to newer tweets.

Whether it’s trolls, antivaxxers, Covid-19 deniers, or simply an organized gang of idiots, they’re trying hard to control the conversation. Simply ask anyone you know. People might tell you something like this:

“It's not my business to track variants. If new variants bring new symptoms, like this rash that some kids develop, I expect to hear that from government officials.”

“All of USA is still delta basically from what I'm reading. So no idea what omicron brings.”

“Hmmm not worried about omicron. But I'm also not following the news as closely as I was before. I've heard that omicron is very contagious but the symptoms are generally not as severe.”

“I can't keep doing the doom scrolling thing. Omicron is a concern since it seems to evade the covid vaccine antibodies, but I heard it's effects are not thought to be more severe than the current disease so far.”

(Quotes from friends, or friends of friends who wish to remain nameless.)

Okay, down to the meaty stuff.

Here is a slew of tweets by high-profile accounts and some responses that occur usually within two minutes.

Note: Given the absolute avalanche of Omicron tweets, it becomes difficult to differentiate the signal from the noise. If we assume an organization is manipulating the conversation to trick people into thinking Omicron is mild and Omicron is in fact not mild, there will be some useful idiots mixed up with the bad actors. These are people that have been mislead by others into believing Omicron is mild.

It’s impossible to know for sure which accounts belong to the organization manipulating the Omicron discussion, and which accounts are simply useful idiots, but we can make an educated guess based on their profile.

Sample Tweet #1

Posted at 7:44 PM.

Two minutes later…

Four minutes later.

Sample Tweet #2

Posted at 1:07 PM.

Two minutes later.

Sample Tweet #3

Posted at 12:42 PM.

Four minutes later.

Sample Tweet #4

Posted at 9:44 PM.

Four minutes later.

Sample Tweet #5

Posted at 10:02 AM.

One minute later.

Also one minute later.

Sample Tweet #6

Posted at 10:10 AM.

One minute later.

Sample Tweet #7

Posted at 12:03 AM.

Immediate reply.

Sample Tweet #8

Posted at 12 PM.

Four minutes later.

Sample Tweet #9

Posted at 2:01 PM.

Two minutes later.

Sample Tweet #10

Posted at 4:37 PM.

Two minutes later.

Sample Tweet #11

Posted at 5:35 PM.

One minute later.

One thing these replies seem to have in common is that they’re very short. Almost as if someone is scrambling to post a reply as quick as possible. Which makes sense if they’re trying to manipulate the conversation. The sooner they post their response, the more people will read it.

After waking up this morning, I read the news that someone in the UK had died.

Posted at 7:10 AM.

Three minutes later.

Now it seems the messaging has changed. Across the high-profile accounts talking about the first UK death, you see a similar pattern. Quick responses trying to focus on the idea that even if they died with Omicron, Omicron might not be the cause. This seems like a natural progression of the “Omicron is mild” argument.

If Omicron is proven to not be mild, then I expect the messaging will continue to change, but we’re still likely to see some sort form of conversation manipulation.

What’s to do be done about it?

Unfortunately, not much. Even if these high-profile people block or mute the manipulators, it’s almost always a different account that replies to the next tweet.. Trying to block these manipulators would be like an endless game of Whack-a-Mole.

If you have a high-profile Twitter account and suspect that people in your tweets are manipulating the conversation and you want to stop this, you can always change your settings.

The high-profile accounts mentioned at the start of this article and seen in the examples aren’t the only ones. From what I’ve seen this thing is pretty widespread. Almost every prominent doctor, scientist, or news organization with lots of followers has people in the comment section trying to manipulate others.

Doctors and scientists with fewer followers are not seeing this. I suspect it is because it would be harder to get lost in the noise. Also, people with less followers are more likely to respond and refute the manipulator’s nonsense.

In summary: It appears that someone (or an organization) is attempting to manipulate the conversation surrounding the seriousness of Omicron. To what end, I have no idea.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully I'm totally wrong about this. But in my experience when there are lot of breadcrumbs in a dark forest they often lead to witches. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Good luck out there and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.