As my Twitter followers and other friends will know, I actively campaign against balloon releases — they litter, and harm wildlife.
This post isn’t about that, but about something odd which I discovered while doing so.
Each day, I search Twitter for people who are planning a balloon release, and politely ask them not to do it. A sufficient number to make this worthwhile, oblige.
About a year or so ago, give or take, I saw a tweet, the URL of which I have long since lost track of, saying:
Thank you Herkimer Elementary for a beautiful balloon release. Headed to Slavic Pentacostal Church.
(Both venues are in Herkimer, New York, USA, if you wondered.)
But then a while later, I saw exactly the same text tweeted by someone else. Then again by another account, a few days later, then again. This went on, week after week. Gradually, the frequency increased, and now at any time there are hundreds of recent tweets with that text:
https://twitter.com/charolettetm/status/292294397670850561
https://twitter.com/lashernndshane/status/292287884197773312
https://twitter.com/janinemccormi/status/292286193079566336
https://twitter.com/trishadicksonuk/status/292270073828212737
https://twitter.com/lavelleboothjnu/status/292224663940128768
You can try the ‘Herkimer Elementary beautiful balloon release’ search yourself.
If we examine one of the accounts tweeting that, say @janinemccormi (picked at random), we can see he’s tweeted other things:
https://twitter.com/janinemccormi/status/291091194732244993
https://twitter.com/janinemccormi/status/289943029542961152
(Interestingly, a Google image search shows that @janinemccormi’s avatar is shared with @sanevekaxu7, whose account is suspended.)
Those messages have each been tweeted by lots of other people:
https://twitter.com/AugustaGriffit9/status/292298948205502465
https://twitter.com/ChristyFry7/status/292288707422220290
https://twitter.com/GustavoMcclain/status/292285011686723585
https://twitter.com/lawanavdqplaza/status/292249058641338368
https://twitter.com/RenaldoJames2/status/292231467197661184
(‘ASOS Topshop killlllllllling meee’ search).
and again:
https://twitter.com/darcijvgsledfor/status/292313158306111489
preciso sair e passar nos outros fcs '-' beeijos.
— Berenice Gutierrez (@Berenic71145467) January 18, 2013
https://twitter.com/ErickStephenso2/status/292137319039893504
https://twitter.com/LillianRogers18/status/292135322765103104
https://twitter.com/YolandePowell/status/292116140837191680
(‘preciso sair e passar nos outros fcs ‘-‘ beeijos.’ search).
And so it goes on: hundreds of identical tweets, from accounts making hundreds of other duplicate tweets. You’ll be able to find plenty more examples.
Now, at the risk of casting aspersions on innocent bystanders, I think it’s safe to assume that those are not genuine accounts (or if they are, they’re compromised).
If I were Twitter, I’d be looking into this and suspending some accounts. A lot of accounts.