# Technique T0151.008: Microblogging Platform
* **Summary**: Examples of Microblogging Platforms include TikTok, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, QQ, Tumblr, and X (formerly Twitter).
Microblogging Platforms allow users to create Accounts, which they can configure to present themselves to other platform users. This typically involves Establishing Account Imagery and Presenting a Persona.
Accounts on Microblogging Platforms are able to post short-form text content alongside media.
Content posted to the platforms is aggregated into different feeds and presented to the user. Typical feeds include content posted by other Accounts which the user follows, and content promoted by the platform’s proprietary Content Recommendation Algorithm. Users can also search or use hashtags to discover new content.
Mastodon is an open-source decentralised software which allows anyone to create their own Microblogging Platform that can communicate with other platforms within the “fediverse” (similar to how different email platforms can send emails to each other). Meta’s Threads is a Microblogging Platform which can interact with the fediverse.
* **Belongs to tactic stage**: TA07
| Incident | Descriptions given for this incident |
| -------- | -------------------- |
| [I00097 Report: Not Just Algorithms](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00097.md) | This report explores the role of four systems (recommender systems, content moderation systems, ad approval systems and ad management systems) in creating risks around eating disorders.
[...]
Content recommender systems can create risks. We created and primed ‘fake’ accounts for 16-year old Australians and found that some recommender systems will promote pro-eating disorder content to children.
Specifically: On TikTok, 0% of the content recommended was classified as pro-eating disorder content; On Instagram, 23% of the content recommended was classified as pro-eating disorder content; On X, 67% of content recommended was classified as pro-eating disorder content (and disturbingly, another 13% displayed self-harm imagery).
Content recommendation algorithms developed by Instagram (T0151.001: Social Media Platform, T0153.006: Content Recommendation Algorithm) and X (T0151.008: Microblogging Platform, T0153.006: Content Recommendation Algorithm) promoted harmful content to an account presenting as a 16 year old Australian. |
| [I00109 Coordinated Facebook Pages Designed to Fund a White Supremacist Agenda](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00109.md) | This report examines the white nationalist group Suavelos’ use of Facebook to draw visitors to its website without overtly revealing their racist ideology. This section of the report looks at the Suavelos website, and the content it links out to.
In going back to Suavelos’ main page, we also found: A link to a page on a web shop: alabastro.eu; A link to a page to donate money to the founders through Tipee and to the website through PayPal; [and] a link to a private forum that gathers 3.000 members: oppidum.suavelos.eu;
Suavelos linked out to an online store which it controlled (T0152.004: Website, T0148.004: Payment Processing Capability), and to accounts on payment processing platforms PayPal and Tipee (T0146: Account, T0148.003: Payment Processing Platform).
The Suavelos website also hosted a private forum (T0151.009: Legacy Online Forum Platform, T0155: Gated Asset), and linked out to a variety of assets it controlled on other online platforms: accounts on Twitter (T0146: Account, T0151.008: Microblogging Platform), YouTube (T0146: Account, T0152.006: Video Platform), Instagram and VKontakte (T0146: Account, T0151.001: Social Media Platform). |
| [I00113 Inside the Shadowy World of Disinformation for Hire in Kenya](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00113.md) | Researchers at Mozilla examined influence operations targeting Kenyan citizens on Twitter in 2021, providing “a grim window into the booming and shadowy industry of Twitter influencers for political hire here in Kenya”, and giving insight into operations’ operationalisation:
In our interviews with one of the influencers, they informed us of the agile tactics they use to organize and avoid detection. For example, when it’s time to carry out the campaign the influencers would be added to a Whatsapp group. Here, they received direction about what to post, the hashtags to use, which tweets to engage with and who to target. Synchronizing the tweets was also incredibly important for them. It’s what enables them to achieve their goal of trending on Twitter and gain amplification.
[...]
They revealed to us that those participating in the exercise are paid roughly between $10 and $15 to participate in three campaigns per day. Each campaign execution involves tweeting about the hashtags of the day until it appears on the trending section of Twitter. Additionally, some individuals have managed to reach retainer level and get paid about $250 per month. Their job is to make sure the campaigns are executed on a day-by-day basis with different hashtags.
An M-PESA account (T0148.002: Bank Account, T0148.001: Online Banking Platform) was used to pay campaign participants.
Participants were organised in WhatsApp groups (T0129.005: Coordinate on Encrypted/Closed Networks, T0151.007: Chat Broadcast Group, T0151.004: Chat Platform), in which they planned how to get campaign content trending on Twitter (T0121: Manipulate Platform Algorithm, T0151.008: Microblogging Platform). |
| [I00116 Blue-tick scammers target consumers who complain on X](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00116.md) | Consumers who complain of poor customer service on X are being targeted by scammers after the social media platform formerly known as Twitter changed its account verification process.
Bank customers and airline passengers are among those at risk of phishing scams when they complain to companies via X. Fraudsters, masquerading as customer service agents, respond under fake X handles and trick victims into disclosing their bank details to get a promised refund.
They typically win the trust of victims by displaying the blue checkmark icon, which until this year denoted accounts that had been officially verified by X.
Changes introduced this year allow the icon to be bought by anyone who pays an £11 monthly fee for the site’s subscription service, renamed this month from Twitter Blue to X Premium. Businesses that pay £950 a month receive a gold tick. X’s terms and conditions do not state whether subscriber accounts are pre-vetted.
Andrew Thomas was contacted by a scam account after posting a complaint to the travel platform Booking.com. “I’d been trying since April to get a refund after our holiday flights were cancelled and finally resorted to X,” he said.
“I received a response asking me to follow them, and DM [direct message] them with a contact number. They then called me via WhatsApp asking for my reference number so they could investigate. Later they called back to say that I would be refunded via their payment partner for which I’d need to download an app.”
Thomas became suspicious and checked the X profile. “It looked like the real thing, but I noticed that there was an unexpected hyphen in the Twitter handle and that it had only joined X in July 2023,” he said.
In this example a newly created paid account was created on X, used to direct users to other platforms (T0146.002: Paid Account, T0146.003: Verified Account, T0146.005: Lookalike Account ID, T0097.205: Business Persona, T0122: Direct Users to Alternative Platforms, T0143.003: Impersonated Persona, T0151.008: Microblogging Platform, T0150.001: Newly Created). |
| [I00120 factcheckUK or fakecheckUK? Reinventing the political faction as the impartial factchecker](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00120.md) | Ahead of the 2019 UK Election during a leader’s debate, the Conservative party rebranded their “Conservative Campaign Headquarters Press” account to “FactCheckUK”:
That is, until a few minutes into the debate.
All at once, like a person throwing off their street clothes to reveal some sinister new identity underneath, @CCHQPress abruptly shed its name, blue Conservative logo, Boris Johnson banner, and bio description. Moments later, it had entirely reinvented itself.
The purple banner was emblazoned with white font that read “✓ factcheckUK [with a “FROM CCQH” subheading]”.
The matching profile picture was a white tick in a purple circle. The bio was updated to: “Fact checking Labour from CCHQ”. And the name now read factcheckUK, with the customary Twitter blue (or white depending on your phone settings!) validation tick still after it
In this example an existing verified social media account on Twitter was repurposed to inauthentically present itself as a Fact Checking service (T0151.008: Microblogging Platform, T0150.003: Pre-Existing, T0146.003: Verified Account, T0097.203: Fact Checking Organisation Persona, T0143.002: Fabricated Persona). |
| [I00125 The Agency](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00125.md) | In 2014 threat actors attributed to Russia spread the false narrative that a local chemical plant had leaked toxic fumes. This report discusses aspects of the operation:
[The chemical plant leak] hoax was just one in a wave of similar attacks during the second half of last year. On Dec. 13, two months after a handful of Ebola cases in the United States touched off a minor media panic, many of the same Twitter accounts used to spread the Columbian Chemicals hoax began to post about an outbreak of Ebola in Atlanta. [...] Again, the attention to detail was remarkable, suggesting a tremendous amount of effort. A YouTube video showed a team of hazmat-suited medical workers transporting a victim from the airport. Beyoncé’s recent single “7/11” played in the background, an apparent attempt to establish the video’s contemporaneity. A truck in the parking lot sported the logo of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Accounts which previously presented as Louisiana locals were repurposed for use in a different campaign, this time presenting as locals to Atlanta, a place over 500 miles away from Louisiana and in a different timezone (T0146: Account, T0097.101: Local Persona, T0143.002: Fabricated Persona, T0151.008: Microblogging Platform, T0150.004: Repurposed).
A video was created which appeared to support the campaign’s narrative (T0087: Develop Video-Based Content), with great attention given to small details which made the video appear more legitimate. |
| [I00129 Teen who hacked Joe Biden and Bill Gates' Twitter accounts sentenced to three years in prison](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00129.md) | An 18-year-old hacker who pulled off a huge breach in 2020, infiltrating several high profile Twitter accounts to solicit bitcoin transactions, has agreed to serve three years in prison for his actions.
Graham Ivan Clark, of Florida, was 17 years old at the time of the hack in July, during which he took over a number of major accounts including those of Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Kim Kardashian West.
Once he accessed them, Clark tweeted a link to a bitcoin address and wrote “all bitcoin sent to our address below will be sent back to you doubled!” According to court documents, Clark made more than $100,000 from the scheme, which his lawyers say he has since returned.
Clark was able to access the accounts after convincing an employee at Twitter he worked in the company’s information technology department, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
In this example a threat actor gained access to Twitter’s customer service portal through social engineering (T0146.004: Administrator Account, T0150.005: Compromised, T0151.008: Microblogging Platform), which they used to take over accounts of public figures (T0146.003: Verified Account, T0143.003: Impersonated Persona, T0150.005: Compromised, T0151.008: Microblogging Platform).
The threat actor used these compromised accounts to trick their followers into sending bitcoin to their wallet (T0148.009: Cryptocurrency Wallet). |
| Counters | Response types |
| -------- | -------------- |
DO NOT EDIT ABOVE THIS LINE - PLEASE ADD NOTES BELOW