Bots(?) from the Campaign Season Remain Active on Social Media - Part I - @AmyMek and @LindaSuhler

Amy Mek is a prolific Tweeter. Her account was opened on the morning of November 17, 2012. She has tweeted 45,693 times as of this evening.  That means she has Tweeted an average of 25 times per day for the past five years. Her Twitter profile says she is a vegan psychotherapist in New York City. She has more than 199,000 followers, including former national security advisor Michael Flynn, and lots of users with blank profile banners, no faces, and suspiciously bot-like activity. She is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump and the NRA, and an opponent of immigration. Some of the most common words in her recent Tweets, according to the Twitter tracking website foller.me, are “media,” “mulsims,” “terrorist,” “attack,” “slaughtered,” “islamic,” “nyc,” “muslim,” “mueller,” “mosque,” “jihad,” and “fbi.”

But Amy Mek may not really exist.

In March 2017 Maureen Erwin reported in The San Francisco Examiner that she had been searching for evidence that “Amy” exists. (She didn’t find any.) “Amy” had been quoted in The New York Times in May 2016, before the primary season was over, in an article titled “The Women Who Like Donald Trump.” the article mentions another Twitter star, Linda Suhler, PhD, a molecular biologist who interacts with Amy Mek. She has lots of followers, an averag of 26 tweets per day, grandchildren, and the article suggests that she has made real-life friendships with other Trump-supporting women she has met on Twitter who are on the #TrumpTrain.

Neither of these women’s profile pics connect to any other images on Google Reverse Image Search. Neither seem to have a curriculum vitae or other professional identity on the Internet. They do, however, both appear as “experts” on a website, agilience.com, which originates from France, and seems to be a conduit for funneling Internet users toward Internet influencers. “Amy” is listed as an “top authority on Islamic terrorism,” and “Linda” is listed as a “top expert in American politics.”

Are these women real? Maybe. Or, perhaps, they are personas created to boost Donald Trump’s popularity among women during the primary and general election seasons.
Looking at Amy Mek’s" early Tweets, in the first half of 2013 (a few months after the opened the account was opened). They don’t look very personal. In her early Twitter life, “Amy” may have been a bot. “Linda” began a bit earlier on Twitter, but her activity in the first half of 2013 appears very similar. (No wonder they got to be friends over Trump.)

Russian intelligence may have created these accounts long before the 2016 presidential season, used them as automated accounts (or accounts run by employees in a troll farm), and activated them to become content pushers as needed.

Alternatively, there may be automated accounts formed by U.S. operatives, which were activated by U.S. Trump supporters when needed for the campaign.

It is also possible that these two personas are real people, with professional careers, who have no online presence except as Twitter influencers and experts on a French website.
I will update as this story develops.

The San Francisco Examiner article can be found here.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/searching-proof-amy/

The New York Times opinion article by Emma Roller from 2016 can be found here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/opinion/campaign-stops/the-women-who-like-donald-trump.html?_r=0

Numerous clips from the Twitter accounts of “Amy Mek” and “Linda Suhler” are included below.
​(Source: Twitter)

Update: Maureen Erwin wrote another article for the  San Francisco Examiner, published November 23, addressing the abusive bots on Twitter, particularly "Amy Mek."
http://www.sfexaminer.com/twitter-still-turning-blind-eye-abusive-bots/

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