These politically enthusiastic supplement fans do not exist
In which a group of fake Bluesky accounts masquerading as liberals promotes an ad for weight loss supplements from an account with an AI-generated face
In a rather bizarre turn of events, this Bluesky post from a (now-suspended) account with an AI-generated face advertising weight loss supplements received a flurry of reposts from what initially appear to be political accounts. Several of the reposting accounts have AI-generated faces as well, and show other signs of inauthenticity, such as repeated text in their biographies. Additionally, the website promoted in the post features alleged customer reviews from “customers” with AI-generated faces.
These accounts are (or were) part of an astroturf network consisting of thirteen Bluesky accounts: the @moremedicine1.bsky.social account, which posted the original post advertising supplements, and twelve amplifier accounts that reposted (and in some cases replied to) @moremedicine1.bsky.social’s post. Seven of the amplifier accounts have biographies consistent with liberal personas; the remaining five have generic biographies such as “Turning dreams into reality, one bold move at a time. Inspiring people to take risks, build businesses, and embrace their true potential”.
Some of the biographies contain duplicate text; i.e. “fan of cats/dogs and democracy. 💙(No DM's, crypto, bots or only fans.)🚫”, which appears in the biographies of three of the accounts. Two banner images are also repeated, a photo of two swans and a low-resolution graphic of a row of blue balloons, as is one avatar, a photograph of an orange cat. Eight of the thirteen accounts follow either 1500 or 1501 accounts, although the set of accounts followed by each is different.
Seven of the accounts, including the @moremedicine1.bsky.social account that posted the original advertisement for weight loss supplements, use StyleGAN-generated faces as profile images. In the case of these accounts, each image has been cropped slightly differently, possibly to disrupt detection methods that rely on the highly predictable eye positioning normally seen in these images. Anomalies indicating the artificial origin of the images are still present, however, such as surreal clothing and backgrounds, glasses that blend incorrectly with the face, and incorrectly rendered teeth.
Two of the accounts, “Steven The Democrat” (@steventhedemocrat.bsky.social) and “Jessica Powell💙” (@jessicapowell1.bsky.social) use stolen photographs of real people as avatars. The photo used by “Steven The Democrat” was previously used by a similar account named “Mike The Democrat”. Both “Steven” and “Jessica” have the text “Proud father of lesbian daughter and trans son, blue dot in red town in blue state.🌈💙” in their biographies.
One of the accounts with a GAN-generated face, “Catherin S. Bennett” (catherinbennett.bsky.social) was placed on multiple follow lists by real users, possibly due to the veneer of expertise provided by the account’s claim to be a retired physics professor. (Unsurprisingly, the account also made its way onto multiple blocklists.) The “Catherin” account, along with most of the other accounts in the network, attempted to grow its audience by following liberal accounts that participate in followback behavior, with mixed success.
GAN-generated faces also appear on the website linked in the original ad, mitolyn dot com. Here, the fake faces are used to represent satisfied customers, and are attached to glowing five-star product reviews. No reviews that fall even slightly short of perfect are to be found, and none have a photo of a real person attached. (Incidentally, this is not the first website to use GAN-generated faces to represent product reviewers of dubious authenticity.)
really excellent. follows what i saw on twitter and tiktok.