Uber vs Taxi: the taxi lobby deploys some very shady weapons on Twitter

If you're a regular reader of the blog, you'll know that this is a saga that I follow with relish, as there's a real battle of influence going on. In previous instalments, I did a full review of lobbying on social networks, and deciphered Uber's #LaissezNousTravailler campaign. Very recently, I came across a rather questionable tactic among the anti-Uber crowd. And with good reason, since it's a technique taken directly from the Islamic State's propaganda on the Bluebird social network. I've only found two cases so far, but it's a safe bet that others are out there. Let's take a look!

It all started with a technique already used by the Islamic State

The technique is well known to Islamic State propagandists. On Twitter, you can change your pseudonym/alias while keeping all your followers, following and likes. The only thing you lose is your tweets. The manoeuvre is unlimited and very easy to carry out. Just go to preferences, account and change your pseudonym: that's it!

This allows Islamic State propagandists to tweet propaganda, but delete it before Twitter censors flatten their account. I found this type of technique with two anti-Uber accounts. I observed them for several weeks. When we first met, the person was a business journalist in the Web tribunes, then an official MediaPart Fan Club account. You can see the similarity between the number of subscribers and the gradual evolution.

The second account is slightly larger in terms of audience. For some people, the account's very low number of tweets is noticeable. I can see him going from being a simple person with a pseudonym to becoming a lawyer, and even a doctor in time:

When he became a doctor, a surgeon, he went so far as to push the logic very far:

Note that Touizane is the only pseudonym that was used by both accounts, which may indicate that we are dealing with one and the same person.

By digging into the tweet histories of these accounts, we have proof that they have all disappeared:

What do these accounts do?

There's no need to beat around the bush: most of the time, these accounts are spreading anti-Uber propaganda:

They pretend to be people working in a job they don't have, while spreading false information:

As soon as the accounts reappear, they simply repost all the previous propaganda:

For what purpose?

Curiously enough, the larger of the two accounts has a large number of journalists among its subscribers. These include :

• You Martial, editor-in-chief of RTL's Economics department
• Fabienne Sintes, journalist for Radio France
• Guillaume Daret, senior reporter at France 2
• Donald Hebert, journalist at L'Obs
• Corrine Lepage, former Minister for the Environment
• Anne Laure Jumet, deputy head of economics at Europe 1.
• Nassira El Moaddem, journalist at Bondyblog

This manoeuvre makes it possible to insert oneself into the timeline of these journalists while appearing to be another sender than the one for which the journalists have chosen to follow them. The targets and media are also fairly clear, with activity centred mainly on two people: Jacques Rapoport, the mediator in the VTC dispute, and MP Grandguillaume, who drafted the VTC law in 2016.

To this universe we can add Simonnet2, more commonly known as Simonnet Danielle, who is completely pro-taxi and anti-Uber. Taking the accounts I found in my survey, I was able to define the universe in terms of followers as follows:

There are normal communities (pink) while the green/ochre community is where the 'dirty things' happen, with the latest identities of my two accounts with dubious techniques: Dreeft2 (now Boufiz06) and AlphaTaxisParis. Oh yes, didn't I tell you? The famous surgeon seems to have fixed his last identity:

And for yet another identity, he seems to have settled down since December:

By the way, they forgot to take back their old name, since the entire list of taxis is essentially missing one person:

And the tracks don't lie:

It's been 3 months since the account stabilised, which makes me think it could well be them. I've seen a lot of trojans, but an entire entity changing its official account, followed by numerous journalists, in order to carry out an operation and revert to its original identity as if nothing had happened, is beyond anything we can imagine. We imagined the army of lobbyists on Uber's side. It has to be said that taxis also have their very dubious techniques. In any case, this Public Affairs battle on social networks is fascinating, and there's no doubt that another article on the subject will be coming out in the near future!