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Photo by Andrew Horne

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

11/6/2017

6 Comments

 
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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.
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(Source: Twitter)

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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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6 Comments
Bonk bonk
1/18/2019 09:48:38 pm

Conaideeing the fact that this article is still up to call these women fake/bots when you search their names on google, i would say THIS is the propaganda outlet. Otherwise you would delete or update this page. Mek has been doxed for like a year now...

Reply
ReasonandJustice
1/19/2019 11:58:45 am

For updates, please see other outlets. This blog is intended to document current events as they unfold. The stories of bots and trolls influencing American politics is not finished.
Please see this Southern Poverty Law Center article: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/06/12/unmasked-anti-muslim-troll-amy-mekelburg-connected-chris-gaubatz

Thanks for commenting!

Reply
Gentleman Scholar
4/17/2020 08:34:00 pm

Social media has become, unfortunately, a very influential echo-chamber of unbased facts and misleading information, often seemingly employed for drumming up and creating mobs of support for certain political leanings.

While there is little way to confirm whether these accounts are bot controlled, adapted personas under human control, or possibly even paid "actors," the two accounts specified, in fact, do identify real persons.

As ReasonandJustice has already commented, information has been traced on AmyMek (more on her has been reported at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anti-muslim-twitter-troll-amy-mek-mekelburg_n_5b0d9e40e4b0802d69cf0264 ).

And although her twitter handle has been mentioned in some other articles on social influence and bot-like activity (see https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/election-polling-trouble-can-internet-data-save-it and https://www.cyberscoop.com/wikileaks-twitter-bots-vault7-cia-leak ), it's difficult to search for any significant validated background on "Linda Suhler, PhD" other than an article from Bloomberg ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-03/twitter-study-finds-coordinated-pattern-in-vote-fraud-messages ).

Before happening upon the Bloomberg article and intrigued by the fact that she was denoted as a PhD, I was curious about her educational background. Linda Suhler's facebook page lists her doctorate in Molecular Biology from the University of Texas Houston Health Science Center Graduate School of Biological Sciences in 1983. Generally, dissertations are searchable; and while no record exists for "Linda Suhler" from 1983, there is a record for "Linda Carolyn Lopez" ( https://thslc-houston.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Dissertations,AND&pfilter=rtype,exact,dissertations,AND&tab=Everything&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&sortby=date_a&vid=01TEXASHEALTH_HOUSTON:TMC_INST&facet=topic,include,Dissertations%20Academic%20University%20Of%20Texas%20Health%20Science%20Center%20At%20Houston%20Graduate%20School%20Of%20Biomedical%20Sciences&facet=searchcreationdate,include,1983%7C,%7C1983&mode=advanced&offset=0&came_from=sort ). The vita at the end of her dissertation (full document accessible with an institutional subscription) provides her full name as Linda Carolyn Suhler Lopez - Suhler being her maiden name. ( https://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2146&context=dissertations )

Under her dissertation name, she's published at least 13 articles between 1983 and 2010. So, she's most definitely a real person, has a real PhD, and seemingly has strong conservative leanings that she supports and promotes under her maiden name. She's made campaign contributions ( https://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/linda-suhler.asp?cycle=16 ) and has other public affiliations ( http://phoenixteaparty.ning.com/profile/LindaSuhler ).

She also has a few notable, public-figure family connections. Her son (named in full in her dissertation vita) was appointed to the Arizona Supreme Court following the 2016 elections. ( https://www.azcourts.gov/meetthejustices/Justice-John-R-Lopez-IV ) Her husband, George Poste (named in page 6 of a financial disclosure related to her son - https://apps.azsos.gov/election/Financial_Disclosure/2017/Lopez,%20John.pdf ) has held significant positions in the bio-industry, academia, and government advisory.
Links:
https://prabook.com/web/george_henry.poste/71429
https://sols.asu.edu/george-poste
https://sustainability.asu.edu/person/george-poste/
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-07/asu-abi071806.php
[Interestingly, he gave a seminar in Jan 2019 regarding the high probability, high consequence biosecurity threat of a natural infectious disease pandemic - https://www.dropbox.com/s/y4j9pk3i8724lt9/X921A%20Biosecurity%20Stanford%201.23.19.pdf?dl=0 ]. His education and academic work are rather robust.

Still hard to say definitively how that background ties to the level of activity and re-tweet behavior on her twitter account.

Although if anyone wanted to suggest relations between the two accounts' behavior and government links with the real persons, there are strands of connection. In regard to AmyMek, huff-post also points out AmyMek --> husband Siino --> WWE exec --> McMahons --> Linda McMahon, former cabinet member and chief of SBA, now current chair of America First Action superPAC. Maybe its just the small world in business and politics.

Again, it could also just be a few non-working, opinionated and biased, consistently chirping heads that very personally want to serve a particular political interest. Still, does twitter have a limit on re-tweet capability in a 24hr period? Such might curb the propensity for bot behavior. When instant messaging was first introduced, there was a limit on the number of sent messages within a time period to prevent spamming.

Alternatively, the only way to combat the behavior would be with coordinated fact-based replies du

John DeVere link
3/14/2019 01:53:04 pm

There are no people in the U.S. by the name of Linda Suhler, nor Amy Mek.
Amy's personas are Dutch in nature
Linda would be an Amy in Arizona.
Here are some aliases used since late 2010 for Linda:
‪Linda Lopez‬
Linda Suhler
John Lopez
Jennifer Lopez
Linda Poste
Linda Chavida
Lorena Lopez

All share the same pool of addresses, brithdates, and phone numbers.
NONE of which are real.
There are no court records of ANY type for said names.
They were all born on the net late 2010 -2014.
Twitter apparently approves of these known bots.

https://twitter.com/deverejohn/status/1105898464829997057?s=21

Reply
John DeVere
3/14/2019 12:43:20 pm

Amy and Linda are not real.
They have no genuine records anywhere.
Each has ~20 aliases with the same address and phone number
Some of Linda’s aliases:
‪Linda Lopez‬
Linda Suhler
John Lopez
Jennifer Lopez
Linda Poste
Linda Chavida
Lorena Lopez

Reply
Nora Black link
12/23/2020 02:41:44 am

Apprecciate you blogging this

Reply



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