Three bot “families” attacking Krivokapic

Prime Minister-designate of Montenegro Zdravko Krivokapic is a target of the Twitter bot accounts, which, with concerted efforts, attacked his attitudes on the formation of a technocratic government.

The bot network consisting of more than 80 bot accounts from three families – Andric, Ivanovic, and Popovic are attacking Krivokapic on Twitter for his determination that all the minister-candidates of the new Government should be subject to the qualification verification for their designated positions.

Analyzing the bot network, we concluded that each member of the Popovic family was created on the same day (October 13) while the Andric family was created a couple of days later (on October 17 and 18). The accounts with the surname Ivanovic were created on October 25.

The accounts were not active until yesterday’s tweet of the Prime Minister-designate Krivokapic in which he emphasized that all the minister-candidates of the new Government should be subject to the qualification verification for their designated positions, adding that that did not exclude the politicians if their biography satisfied the criteria for a proposed position.

Subsequently, a bot account @AndricDanijela4 retweeted Krivokapic’s post and criticized his attitudes. Soon after, the bot network has been activated.

https://twitter.com/AndricDanijela4/status/1321530795673165830

Almost all accounts belonging to this bot network retweeted the @AndricDanijela4 tweet, with no likes. This indicated that the goal was to amplify the reach of the existing content and not to create a new and an original one – which is one of the key features of bot accounts.

All accounts with Popovic surname had just one tweet while the Andric accounts had two of them or more, with the same narrative. All tweets mentioned Nebojsa Medojevic, leader of the Movement for Changes (PzP), one of the biggest critics of the Prime Minister-designate. Additionally, some accounts from the Andric family were defending Medojevic’s attitudes, stating that the PzP’s leader is the only one having made some concrete moves for all these years.

All the profile photos were created using artificial intelligence and some websites such as thispersondoesnotexist.  The algorithm of this platform is trained on a huge database from the real photos, after which it uses a type of neural network known as generative adversarial network (GAN) to create new examples. Every time you refresh the website, the network will create a new image of a face. All the profile photos were created using artificial intelligence and some websites such as thispersondoesnotexist.  The algorithm of this platform is trained on a huge database from the real photos, after which it uses a type of neural network known as generative adversarial network (GAN) to create new examples. Every time you refresh the website, the network will create a new image of a face.

A particular number of photos presenting Asian people indicates to the truthfulness of this statement.

Moreover, the position of eyes on all profile photos is identical to and forms a straight line, which also indicates that the photos were created using artificial intelligence.

Bot accounts are usually created during significant social and political events in a country with the main goal of directing a public opinion in the wanted direction. Let us remind that the DFC discovered in April a bot network connected with the ruling party in Serbia that was promoting the Chinese aid to that country during the coronavirus pandemic. Soon after that, the DFC also discovered a new bot network from Serbia whose main target was Montenegro.