How did @SVNewsAlerts, a popular purveyor of melodramatic "breaking news" tweets that frequently get retweeted far and wide, rack up 74.1K followers in 6 months? #SundayThoughts

cc: @ZellaQuixote

The first accounts to follow @SVNewsAlerts look like #MAGA followback accounts (similar numbers of followers/following). @SVNewsAlerts only follows one account, though (its own alt, @SVNews_Reporter), so surely it didn't build its massive audience via followbacks. . . or did it?

As it turns out, @SVNewsAlerts (permanent ID 1263205289618214913) wasn't always named @SVNewsAlerts. For the first couple months of its Twitter existence, it was named @republican_owl, and at least one tweet indicating that it used to follow back is still live.

A quick peek at Internet Archive reveals that back in May and June 2020 when @SVNewsAlerts was named @republican_owl, it indeed claimed to follow back accounts that followed it on its profile (which it presumably unfollowed after renaming itself).

The archives also helpfully confirm that the account named @republican_owl in May/June 2020 is the same account presently (November 2020) known as @SVNewsAlerts, as its permanent ID (1263205289618214913) is visible in the HTML source code of the archived tweets.

(Internet Archive links to the archived @republican_owl/ @SVNewsAlerts tweets used in this thread)
https://web.archive.org/web/20200603073014/https://twitter.com/republican_owl/status/1267657554374660103 https://web.archive.org/web/20200527000721if_/https://twitter.com/republican_owl/status/1265384897700560902