I've seen some reactions to this list (some people are mad that they're on it, some people are mad that they aren't on it, some people are mad that other people are on it, some people are mad that they aren't on it any more, some people are going to pay me a visit), and most of those reactions are based on misinterpretations, so I'm shortening the list and adding an explanation.
This list isn't a ranking of who is most ideologically committed to this hate group. I don't know who any of these people are. I'm "just making shit up" in the sense that I'm running a couple of fairly simple algorithms on some data I've collected. The goal I have for those algorithms is to identify "communities" (in a very abstract sense) on Twitter, and also to identify the accounts that are most "central" (also in an abstract sense) to those communities. Hypothetically someone could be "central" in this sense to the conversations that members of an extremist group are having on Twitter without being a member of the extremist group themselves. The algorithm doesn't care.
In the case of these Deseret nationalists (who I'd never heard of before this month), I seeded the data collection step with a list of accounts from BlockDNat, a group that describes itself as "blocking alt-right & troll accounts in Mormon-adjacent Twitter". The data collection system (described in more detail here) then found other accounts whose interactions were primarily with accounts on the BlockDNat list. After a few iterations of that, the system produced a list of a couple thousand accounts, some of which probably don't actually have much to do with any kind of religious fundamentalism.
The next step is what produced this list. The system identifies three kinds of connections between accounts:
- Retweets
- Replies
- Shared presence in a reply thread
The first two are weighted much more highly than the third. Note that the system doesn't use information about who follows who, since it's intended to provide a view of the entire history of a community on Twitter, and we don't have historical information about the follower graph.
These three kinds of connections between accounts give us a network graph, and we can then analyze that network with fairly off-the-shelf implementations of well-known algorithms, which is where the list below came from.
None of this analysis is very sophisticated. I'm not a data scientist. My work on the more general project here (tracking far-right speech on Twitter) started because of a practical need but is mostly a hobby. Some other people have found it useful, so I've been publishing a few examples of its application (like this list).
If you're really proud of your involvement in this hate group and wish you were ranked more highly, all I can say is: produce better content. Focus on engagement. Maybe try not to be such a reply guy.
(One final thing to note is that this list is based entirely on publicly available data, all of which was sourced from the Wayback Machine, not the Twitter API or any Twitter client.)
- Some screen names have appeared twice on the list (for example
@_154831in the current version). This is because each row represents a Twitter account, which has a unique numeric ID (the column on the right), but can have multiple screen names over time. If someone deactivates their account and then creates a new one after 30 days with the same screen name, the new account will have a new numeric ID, and potentially both accounts could appear on the list with the same screen name.
| Score | Screen names | Twitter ID | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.02703297 | JPBellum | 4745389657 |
| 2 | 0.01952807 | JAEbberts | 1081719290133442566 |
| 3 | 0.01833583 | JReubenCIark | 4852741342 |
| 4 | 0.01379722 | Mormonger, colenoorda | 1408886100 |
| 5 | 0.01269674 | Neil10790465 | 886046676 |
| 6 | 0.01106221 | StJohn724, MormonLibsLMAO | 1029587993512824832 |
| 7 | 0.01072696 | chhardman | 26649679 |
| 8 | 0.01030932 | Matthew_7_14, Matt____FL | 1442170544 |
| 9 | 0.01021471 | scottleish | 397792123 |
| 10 | 0.01018112 | 65D_68W_4H0, girdedloins8 | 1237797424602570752 |
| 11 | 0.00925232 | Bossynotbossy, FriedScones, WiseBossy, LiveWiseBossy, LiveWiseLifeNow | 954551442244714496 |
| 12 | 0.00885642 | NotYourBishop | 1281051965636481025 |
| 13 | 0.00876541 | tannerguzy, MasculineStyle | 346063582 |
| 14 | 0.00865847 | _154831 | 522598451 |
| 15 | 0.00851528 | jcbonthedl, KMDontheUH | 1025615726294384640 |
| 16 | 0.00802124 | idahohurricane, Trinabased, TrinaFaye20, Katrinafaye | 34443952 |
| 17 | 0.00795442 | SpacePiolet, DeviousWing, NSteele1991 | 70709964 |
| 18 | 0.00770169 | iamhomosexuaI, UtahValleyDaddy, NiasDiad, ElMioCid3 | 1245591829690478593 |
| 19 | 0.00762405 | ZionBuild____, ZionBuild___, ZionBuild__, Build_Zion_, Build_Zion, Jeremy_Ephraim1 | 1113795464334155776 |
| 20 | 0.00722234 | HannaSeariac | 909106570906054657 |
| 21 | 0.00710867 | larknap | 1070553945896976385 |
| 22 | 0.00693654 | TheTriarii, ParagonZerg | 3002684195 |
| 23 | 0.00672140 | darthcaro, disneecaro | 1257248779276742656 |
| 24 | 0.00651614 | Tower_Overwatch, stulta_diximus | 260834188 |
| 25 | 0.00618562 | BackFromThat | 901126590117011456 |
| 26 | 0.00594283 | hankrsmith | 2404891854 |
| 27 | 0.00589562 | zarahemla21, _KingBenjamin | 1312418083433316352 |
| 28 | 0.00585759 | ABouncingSoul, RooneyB21 | 1212420582836301824 |
| 29 | 0.00578265 | RawHoneyBrah, BrettCainBooks | 1172086334229372928 |
| 30 | 0.00558379 | huddleb2, spinachtyrant99, Amish_tyrant99, spinachthot99, bhudd99, pitied_fool, barnett_stan99, beljeet_97, Muz_Mo99, MuzMo99 | 380620515 |
| 31 | 0.00546064 | _154831 | 1326037483923013633 |
| 32 | 0.00512090 | LeilandTanner | 313774045 |
| 33 | 0.00511371 | Jessla_G | 1125953177742917632 |
| 34 | 0.00497316 | Luv2GoFly | 977914992296013826 |
| 35 | 0.00494988 | bobdaduck | 277536867 |
| 36 | 0.00486645 | LatterdayDoofus | 1020346707802902528 |
| 37 | 0.00483996 | FiverMacGyver, BuddyMacGyver | 1278585428 |
| 38 | 0.00480255 | JesseLucasSaga | 451292765 |
| 39 | 0.00466042 | og_BYU, BYYYYYYYYYYU | 845865030163742720 |
| 40 | 0.00459643 | ConflictJustice, M__Game | 47244501 |