Getty Ghislaine Maxwell in 2013.
A Twitter account called “Tracker Trial,” which was providing updates on Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial, was suspended from Twitter on December 8. However, Twitter sleuths determined that this was not the Twitter user’s first account using that same ID. In addition, the account had other Twitter accounts pointing to the same substack newsletter, including an account established to report only negative news about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Here’s a look at what happened and the account’s background on the site.
The Account Was Suspended for ‘Platform Manipulation & Spam’
On Wednesday, December 8, @TrackerTrial was suspended for violating Twitter’s “platform manipulation and spam” rules, Fox News reported. If you visit the account on Twitter, you’ll see a notification that it was suspended.
Fox News reported that the account had only been active for two weeks, but it was created back in November 2020, according to an Internet Archive saved two days before the account was suspended. At that point in time, the account had 494,600 followers and Fox News reported that this number had grown to 525,000 by the time it was suspended.
The Twitter account linked to patriotone.substack.com in its bio, which brings you to a newsletter called The Free Press Report.
Internet Archive
The archived page for the Twitter account shows that the bio read: “We are tracking the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. All major media outlets are silent on it. BIg-named politicians are using their power within to silence the truth.”
The pinned tweet from November 21 read: “This account will track only the truth from the Maxwell trial. It’s very likely we will be banned by tomorrow. Follow the newsletter if Twitter Clintons us.”
Here’s an example of the type of tweets the account was sharing.
Internet Archive
Fox News reported that the same person owned @NancyTracker, which tracked Nancy Pelosi’s investments, and that account was also suspended.
The Account Addressed the Twitter Suspension on Substack
The account owner, The Free Press Report, runs a Substack page and addressed the suspension in a post there. They wrote: “I woke up this morning and the @TrackerTrial account on Twitter was suspended. All the other accounts that I have made in the past were also suspended. This was the only note that I received.”
They shared a screenshot from Twitter saying they had violated the platform’s rules against manipulation and spam.
The suspension letter read: “You may not use Twitter’s services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter. Note that if you attempt to evade a permanent suspension by creating new accounts, we will suspend your new accounts. If you wish to appeal this suspension, please contact our support team.”
The Free Press Report wrote that all their engagement was organic and not the result of outside amplification.
They wrote: “The people wanted to hear the truth about the Ghislaine Maxwell, and Jeffrey Epstein trial and the engagement numbers showed that. There were hundreds of millions in impressions and an account that went from zero to over 525,000 followers in a couple of weeks. All we did was report information from the trial that the mainstream media was failing to do.”
They said they appealed to Twitter and planned to continue “to report on the trial and all forms of big government and corporate corruption.”
Journalist Ford Fischer commented on the suspension on Twitter, writing: “This is core to the problem of big tech censorship. If this account had indeed done something wrong (posted falsehoods or violated someone’s privacy) they should have been alerted and gotten chance to challenge that. Their notification offers no specific explanation.”
Tracker Trial Was Originally Created in 2020 & Has Gone Through Several Iterations
Although Tracker Trial’s first archived tweet is from November 2021, the account was first created on Twitter in November 2020, the account’s archived page showed.
Twitter user “Conspirado Norteno” tweeted that the account was originally @hermanhugh69 and then was @WSBMonitor before becoming @TrackerTrial. They shared photos in a tweet showing that the data user ID for the three accounts matched. This tweet was made before the account was suspended, when it was easier to track down Tracker Trial’s user ID.
As it turns out, @TrackerTrial wasn’t always named @TrackerTrial. Back in Dec 2020, it was named @hermanhugh69 and used a stolen profile pic. It then changed names to @WSBMonitor and tweeted about stocks for a while before deleting all tweets and renaming itself to @TrackerTrial.
Heavy was able to find an archived tweet from Tracker Trial that does show Tracker Trial’s user ID as “1327007938821709826.”
The previous account, @hermanhugh69, does have the same user ID. That account also had a substack to subscribe to. Heavy couldn’t find an archive that showed how many followers it had on Twitter, however. The Conspirador Twitter account wrote: “Back in Dec 2020, it was named @hermanhugh69 and used a stolen profile pic.”
The other account, @WSBMonitor, tweeted about stocks and also had the same user ID. The bio simply read: “We track hot stocks on WallStreetBets.” The account was active as of June 10, 2021, but only one tweet was archived, so Heavy couldn’t determine how many followers the account had at that time.
On Twitter, Conspirador wrote: “As always, be wary of random ‘breaking news’-style Twitter accounts that position themselves as sources of news on controversial topics, especially ones that attempt to deter you from checking other sources of information.”
Conspirador also wrote: “Despite @TrackerTrial’s assertion that the mainstream media isn’t covering the Maxwell trial, the operator of the account appears to be plagiarizing their content from. . . mainstream media (Reuters, CBC, NY Post).”
Now an additional account (@AOCTracker, permanent ID 1450234034165010434) has sprung up and is promoting the same Substack newsletter as @TrackerTrial. The verbiage about their account(s) being at risk of imminent bans is remarkably similar.
A Twitter account called “AOCTracker” also linked to the same substack, as did a backup account called FiatDestroyer that later switched to tracking cryptocurrency.
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