Musk and MAGA are suffering a self-inflicted injury...
The Daily Beast
Elon Musk’s social media site X has rolled out a new feature in an effort to increase transparency—and unwittingly revealed that many of the site’s top MAGA influencers are actually foreign actors.
The new “About This Account” feature, which became available to X users on Friday, allows others to see where an account is based, when they joined the platform, how often they have changed their username, and how they downloaded the X app.
Upon rollout, rival factions began to inspect just where their online adversaries were really based on the combative social platform—with dozens of major MAGA and right-wing influencer accounts revealed to be based overseas.
They’ve spent years stoking division in America...
New Republic
Another popular conservative account, MAGA Nation, with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio that reads, “Standing strong with President Trump 🇺🇸 | America First | Patriot Voice for We The People,” is apparently based in Eastern Europe.
Twitter users rounded up dozens of these accounts, sharing their disbelief. Some Democratic influencers rejoiced: Harry Sisson, a Gen-Z, pro-Biden creator, said, “This is easily one of the greatest days on this platform. Seeing all of these MAGA accounts get exposed as foreign actors trying to destroy the United States is a complete vindication of Democrats, like myself and many on here, who have been warning about this.” (Sisson also compiled his own list of foreign accounts.)
There were some rumors that Musk had disabled the feature upon seeing so many of his biggest fans unmasked, but as of Sunday, it seems to still be intact.
Now their arrogance has blown up in their faces...
The Guardian
Another user also uncovered several additional cases. Dark Maga, a smaller account with roughly 15,000 followers, is run from Thailand. MAGA Scope, which has more than 51,000 followers, operates out of Nigeria, while MAGA Beacon is based in south Asia.
Users on Reddit also joined the exposé effort, posting examples of accounts that appeared to misrepresent their origins. One Reddit user posted a screenshot of a woman who claimed to live in Texas but instead appeared to be located in Russia, though as of Sunday, the user named in the post appears to have a US location. Many in the comments posted other examples they found.
Bots spreading misinformation and propaganda has been a long-running problem on Twitter, a problem that has been significantly exacerbated since Musk bought it in October 2022 and then renamed it X. Its AI chatbot, Grok, has also been found to frequently make and amplify false claims.
The new feature was in the works for awhile...
The hits keep coming…
RawStory
Podcaster Matt Binder posted screenshots showing that Charlie’s Voice Rising, a popular Charlie Kirk fan account, is based in Eastern Europe (non-EU).
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Dem influencer DreamLeaf wrote, "This one is great," along with evidence that a MAGA account called "Americaman" is actually based in Indonesia.
PatriotTakes, which is dedicated to research monitoring and exposing right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy, drew attention to post Trump himself had shared.
Reddit
