Evolution of a T-shirt spammer

In which a repeatedly banned X/Twitter spammer attempts to piggyback on Kamala Harris's candidacy to sell T-shirts with plagiarized designs

new year, new account, same spam

In late July and throughout August 2024, a newly-created X account by the name of @kamala_wins47 has been rapidly building a following among supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. This account, however, is not as it seems; despite a now-deleted assertion of affiliation with the DNC, the account simply appears to be an effort by a random person to sell T-shirts with plagiarized designs. Additionally, this is far from the operator’s first rodeo, as several aspects of the account’s behavior are identical to those of a perennial T-shirt spammer who previously went by the name “Emily Winston” and used a stolen profile photo.

these videos were not, in fact, deleted from Twitter

The original (maybe) “Emily Winston” account, with the handle @Emywinst, was created in August 2021, and amassed over 160 thousand followers before being suspended in September 2023. The account’s engagement strategy was extremely simple, and consisted of two steps:

1. Repost a popular video and falsely claim it has been banned/deleted/removed from X/Twitter

2. Once the video post goes viral, reply to it with spammy ads for T-shirts.

Following the suspension of the @Emywinst account, the successor accounts used this easily-identifiable strategy as well, even linking to the same T-shirt sales site. Although it is unclear how much money the operator of the account has made from selling garments, they have been highly successful at gaining followers on their various accounts.

to the surprise of absolutely no one, “Emily Winston” was a stock photo

The “Emily Winston” account’s profile image was a face photo of a masked woman, with the text “my cough is from smoking weed not the coronavirus” emblazoned on the mask. A TinEye reverse image search reveals that this image is a stock photo, however, and versions of it with different slogans and graphics on the mask had been circulating on the internet for months prior to the “Emily Winston” account’s creation, possibly longer. (Most of the other occurrences of the image are Etsy listings from 2020, and do not appear to have any connection to the “Emily Winston” account or the associated T-shirt spam operation.)

this is not a subtle way to evade a ban

The @Emywinst account was suspended in September 2023, but the operator made repeated attempts to recreate it. The successor accounts had the same plagiarized profile image as the original, and likewise used names that were variations on “Emily Winston”. The replacement accounts peddled the same lineup of T-shirts as the original (via bestusatee.com), and frequently referenced the original account, which they claimed without evidence had been suspended for “speaking out against Trump and traitors”.

meet the new T-shirt spam, same as the old T-shirt spam

In late July 2024, a new X account by the name of @kamala_wins47 burst onto the scene with a very familiar modus operandi: video posts containing false claims that the videos have been banned from X, followed by spammy replies advertising T-shirts on bestusatee.com. In a now-deleted August 19th post, the operator claimed without evidence to be affiliated with the DNC; this, along with the overall theme of the current incarnation of the account, suggests that the operator got bored with repeatedly creating new versions of the “Emily Winston” persona, and decided to try farming engagement by pretending to be associated with the Kamala Harris campaign instead.

unsurprisingly, the T-shirt designs are plagiarized

Much like the original “Emily Winston” profile photo, many (possibly all) of the T-shirt designs are plagiarized. Reverse image searches for the art on most of the shirts reveals a variety of previous articles of clothing and other objects that feature the same graphics. In some cases, the operator of the account has photoshopped their T-shirts onto images of famous individuals such as Taylor Swift. (There is no evidence Swift has purchased anything from this T-shirt spammer, and the photograph of Swift used in the image is actually from the 2019 Time 100 Gala.)

no, Taylor Swift was not photographed wearing one of the spam account’s T-shirts

Finally, the @kamala_wins47 account is not the only currently active X account that appears to be part of this T-shirt spam operation. A secondary account, @Kamala_tim_wins, is presently using the same viral video/T-shirt spam strategy as @Kamala_wins47 and the “Emily Winston” accounts. Unlike the other accounts, however, there is evidence that the operator attempted to use this account to appeal to the other end of the political spectrum: the account, which has the permanent ID 1818058063170957312, started out as @wins_trump47. Although the operator has deleted some of the older pro-Trump posts, others, such as a post calling Tim Walz a “cultural Marxist”, remain online as of the time of this writing.

TFW you forget to delete your old posts before pivoting from scamming Trump supporters to scamming Harris supporters

Footnote: the @kamala_wins47 account gained a blue “verification” checkmark at some point on August 24th, 2024, while I was writing this article. Many of the screenshots used were taken prior to the appearance of the checkmark and thus do not show it.