Read on Twitter
How does one detect renamed Twitter accounts and find the previous names? There's no surefire way to do it, but here are four methods that sometimes work.
cc: @ZellaQuixote https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1357854290719756290
cc: @ZellaQuixote https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1357854290719756290
The first method is to do a Twitter search for old replies to the account in question. Use a search of this form to find replies prior to a given date and make sure to use "Latest" rather than "Top" results.
to:FMAR122 OR @FMAR122 until:2014-01-01
to:FMAR122 OR @FMAR122 until:2014-01-01
The previous name(s) will show up (sometimes alongside the current name) at the beginning of replies to the account's old tweets. This method doesn't always work, but it seems that when it does work, it works even if the tweets being replied to have been deleted.
Threads on the networks that the examples in the collage in the previous tweet came from:
https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1356025044514852864 https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1357854360982745097
https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1356025044514852864 https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1357854360982745097
Method two: look up the account's permanent ID ( https://tweeterid.com will do this for you) and search for it using various search engines. In this case, googling 822215673812119553 yielded @WhiteHouse as a potential previous name of the account currently named @WhiteHouse45.
If there are old archived copies of the account's tweets, one can look up the account's permanent ID by viewing the HTML source code of the archived tweets - the permanent account ID will appear in the code and will match the one you looked up if it's the same account.
Note that using multiple search engines (Google, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Bing) and multiple archive sites can increase the success rate of the search technique. For example if you don't find the permanent ID on Google, try one or more of the other search engines.
The third method for finding old names uses the Twitter API. The text of retweets downloaded by the API begins with RT @<name>, where <name> is the name account being retweeted had at the time of the retweet. Retweets can be downloaded using this API call:
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/v1/tweets/post-and-engage/api-reference/get-statuses-retweets-id
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/v1/tweets/post-and-engage/api-reference/get-statuses-retweets-id
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/v1/tweets/post-and-engage/api-reference/get-statuses-retweets-id
We used this method in this thread to assemble a history of (at least some of) the previous names of the account presently named @Wizard_Predicts (permanent ID 1290635110149169152). https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1325897312619663361
The fourth method is to search existing Twitter datasets (either your own or public datasets such as the disinfo op datasets Twitter periodically releases) for the account's permanent ID and see if old names pop up. https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/information-operations.html
Again, none of these methods are foolproof and in some cases you won't be able to find old names for an account even if it has changed names (accounts that received no interaction under their previous names and have/had few followers are often dead ends.)
