Scores of suspicious accounts on X promote the Azerbaijan government’s messages on COP

We were interested to see how Azerbaijan’s leadership of the conference was being discussed online. Ahead of last year’s COP, two investigations uncovered inauthentic X accounts praising the UAE’s presidency of the conference. 

In addition, the Azerbaijan government has a track record of using coordinated inauthentic accounts on Facebook to target the country’s journalists and democracy activists as well as using bots and troll farms on X to criticise Armenia.

We looked at the conversation on X on the hashtags #COP29 and #COP29Azerbaijan.

Initially we found a lively debate. Of content posted in July, seven of the top 10 most engaged posts were critical of Azerbaijan’s role in the conflict with Armenia. The most-used hashtags (other than #COP29) were #freearmenianhostages and #stopgreenwashgenocide.

Now, however, the conversation has changed. Of content posted in September, all of the top 10 most engaged posts were from the official COP Azerbaijan account.  

We asked ourselves why this is happening.

What we found shows the hallmarks of an attempt to artificially manipulate the conversation on these hashtags to promote the messaging of the Azerbaijan government.

We found 71 accounts using these hashtags that repeatedly amplify official Azerbaijan government messages. The accounts appear to be inauthentic as they are suspiciously similar to each other:

• They look the same: All 71 accounts have images of nature, such as flowers or trees, in their profile picture and/or their banner picture. The image below shows a sample of the accounts.

• Some of them look exactly the same as each other: Seven of the accounts have the same profile picture and/or banner picture as another. The accounts with the white flowers also share the same name. The blue graphic image used as the banner picture in two of the accounts below includes the logo of the New Azerbaijan Party, the ruling political party in the country. 

• They are new: 93% of the accounts were set up within the last six months.
• They amplify the same content: Mostly, the accounts just retweet rather than post their own content. In September, 70% of those retweets were of official Azerbaijan political accounts, primarily the COP account.
• They use the same hashtags: The accounts often don’t add any commentary of their own to their retweets other than hashtags. More than half of their posts in September used #COP29 or #COP29Azerbaijan. In 10% of their posts, they also used the nationalistic #KarabakhIsAzerbaijan hashtag.

Adding to the suspicious nature of these accounts is that their activity seems to be coordinated:

• They are connected to each other: Over half of the accounts are connected to six or more of the other accounts. 87% are connected to at least one other account in the network. 
• They change appearance together: Four of the accounts all posted new profile pictures within five hours of each other.
• They sometimes post in a coordinated, sequential fashion: As shown in the graph below, the timing of their posts suggests that some accounts could be controlled by one person who logs in to each account in turn. 

We believe that the network of 71 accounts described above is likely part of a wider influence operation, seeking to create the impression of widespread grassroots support for Azerbaijan as the host of COP29.

We uncovered an additional group of 111 accounts. While they do not share the striking nature images of the initial network, they do share other characteristics.

• They are new: All 111 accounts were all created in the last five months.
• They amplify the same content: 70% of their retweets were of the official Azerbaijan COP account or other official Azerbaijan political accounts – just like the initial network.
• They use the same hashtags: More than half of their posts in September used #COP29 or #COP29Azerbaijan – again like the initial network.

What we have uncovered here bears the hallmarks of an astroturfing campaign: a coordinated attempt at creating the impression of grassroots support for the Azerbaijan government’s presidency of COP. 

By inflating the reach of government-aligned content, these accounts are drowning out independent critiques of the country’s damning human rights or greenwashing record.

We can’t know for sure who is behind these accounts, but their activity appears to show a vested interest in promoting Azerbaijan’s presidency of COP.  

X and the other main social media platforms all have rules that ban inauthentic behaviour. These rules are important because we can’t allow online conversations to be taken over by those with the money and power to manipulate them in their favour.

X says that users may not use their platform “in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information.” 

The company adds that it considers this kind of platform manipulation to include:

• “inauthentic engagements, that attempt to make accounts or content appear more popular or active than they are” and
• “coordinated activity, that attempts to artificially influence conversations through the use of multiple accounts, fake accounts.”

Social media platforms ought to be able to find out what is going on here as they have information available to them that we can’t see. 

We wrote to X to ask them to investigate these accounts, and the platform confirmed our suspicions about the network of accounts and said that it had taken action against the majority of them. 

X also stated that it had suspended over 460 million accounts in the first half of 2024 under its Platform Manipulation and Spam policy.

X fashions itself as the "global town square", where crucial debates play out in public. When Elon Musk took over the platform, he pledged to crack down on digital manipulation and inauthentic behaviour. 

His actions however indicate different priorities – the very teams that would have been tasked with uncovering this kind of platform manipulation have been significantly reduced in size.

We also wrote to the Azerbaijan government and the COP29 organisers to give them the opportunity to comment on our findings. They did not reply.

We call on X to:

• Investigate whether the Azerbaijan government or others are engaged in platform manipulation, in particular ahead of COP29
• Publicly state who they think is behind the suspicious accounts uncovered here
• Strengthen its safety and moderation efforts to prevent crucial debates such as those surrounding climate change from being overtaken by manipulation efforts