Since he acquired Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk has taken drastic steps to change the political climate of the platform, since rebranded as X. It began with the reinstatement of banned accounts belonging to prominent right-wing conspiracy theorists and extremists, which led to a sharp rise in misinformation and hate speech, some of it shared by Musk himself. He also had the app’s moderation policies weakened, allowing such content to proliferate further. And he killed the original verification system, instead offering a subscription service in which users can boost their reach and receive payment in exchange for posts that drive engagement.
That last move incentivized a culture of provocation rather than conversation, with verified blue-check users spamming inflammatory comments and replies in order to reap as much attention as possible for higher payouts. As Musk allied himself with Donald Trump, MAGA influencers readily opted in to the system to push their agenda and troll liberals for financial gain. But while a number of these commentators were already well known, the vast majority were anonymous. Now, thanks to a feature update, it’s clear just how many of these individuals don’t even live in the United States.
Over the weekend, X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, announced the rollout of “About This Account” profile pages, which provide details on when an account was opened, how often its handle has been changed, and where the owner resides. “This is an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square,” Bier wrote on the site on Saturday. “We plan to provide many more ways for users to verify the authenticity of the content they see on X.” To protect users in countries without free speech protections, he added, the company was implementing “privacy toggles to only show your region” as opposed to the exact country.
As soon as this new information was unleashed, people began looking at the location data for accounts that primarily serve to stoke political tensions in the U.S. with far-right narratives that are often misleading or outright false. Many were instantly revealed to live abroad, suggesting that they have spent years posting this material less out of ideological motivations than for the money, accelerating the polarization of the American electorate in the process.
A user with the handle @AmericanGuyX, for example, who represents themselves as a “Florida guy,” regularly posted in support of Trump and Musk while denouncing figures including George Soros and fear-mongering about the U.S. national debt. Their location, according to X, is India. On Saturday, Trump shared an X post from @TRUMP_ARMY_ about a Supreme Court ruling on Truth Social; that person, who has more than half a million followers, also lives in India. And a now-suspended account with the handle @American and a profile image of a bald eagle superimposed on an American flag traced back to Pakistan.
Other accounts featuring MAGA slogans, American flag emojis, references to the American Revolution, and Trump-favored words such as “patriot” were found to be run by users in places including Nigeria, Turkey, Ukraine, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. Quite a few have substantial followings and at some point alluded to voting for Trump in 2024 despite evidently lacking U.S. citizenship. There was evidence, too, that more of these inauthentic profiles are springing up every day and often rebranding to gain a wider audience. The MAGA account “Charlie’s Voice Rising,” or @CharlieK_news, which uses an avatar of slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and has nearly 200,000 followers, was created less than a year ago by someone in Eastern Europe, and the handle has been changed multiple times.
Musk has yet to comment on the “About This Account” feature, though it revealed that @cb_doge, a pro-Trump user with 1.7 million followers that he regularly amplifies, is located in India. There is a certain irony, of course, in the billionaire immigrant continuing to rail against immigration as a threat to American culture on a daily basis while paying X users abroad to poison domestic political discourse.
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Bier, meanwhile, evidently had a sense of the chaos he was unleashing, at one point posting a meme of a hand about to mash a large button. In his next post, he wrote: “I need a drink.”
As for the users exposed as non-Americans, some damage control has been in order. After it was shown to be based in Nigeria, the person behind @honeymoon250, a large MAGA account with an AI-generated avatar of a white woman, edited their bio to claim that they are a registered nurse who has worked with a non-governmental organization in Africa for the past six years. Though X has a rule against the use of “manufactured identities to engage in disruptive or deceptive behavior,” including “stock, stolen or AI-generated profile photos, copied or stolen profile bios, and/or misleading profile information for the purpose of deceiving others,” the site seems unlikely to take action against this widespread kind of inauthentic behavior, since Musk is hardly disposed to silencing its right-wing voices.
That will leave the trolls to continue peddling their engagement-bait, doing their best to ignore or block any critic who points out that they’re cosplaying as a MAGA voter from the other side of the globe. Their right-wing fans may not care where they get content that validates their views, and the overall tenor of “debates” on X may not improve at all, but either way, a top Musk employee has demonstrated how much of Trump’s online coalition is unable to cast a ballot for him. If nothing else, the platform’s most-followed user may want to reconsider where his talking points are coming from.
From Rolling Stone US
