Top MAGA influencers accidentally unmasked as foreign actors
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.
Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria.
In one example, the account MAGANationX—with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We The People”—is actually based in Eastern Europe.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-influencers-accidentally-unmasked-as-foreign-actors/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
I don't think this is much of a surprise to anyone. What's more interesting to me is that X/Twitter just proved they had the information to know this was going on all along and consequently must have chosen not to intervene. That should raise serious questions of the legal variety.
Maybe if we weren’t living in post-law America…
Well, fortunately I'm not, but I get what you're saying.
This is actually exactly why Musk did it. It’s not a good faith attempt at transparency… It’s straight up “cover your ass” liability shifting. X has been accused of unfettered propaganda in recent election cycles, and this is just an attempt to go “hey, it’s the user’s fault if they fall for the propaganda. All of the info was there for them to find.”
Or Musk wants something and he's threatening the orange.
Not to anyone who’s been paying attention. I just met another tankie who professes to have no idea about it so the more common knowledge the better.
People should just burn down Twitters data centers and offices. Like South Park showed us.
Maybe if we didn’t live in a literal tinpot dictatorship.
this might be surprising to the privacy paranoids that don't want verified and validated online accounts so that authentic online interactions can sweep away the russian bots
when will lemmy do the same? we will see the same patterns me thinks
The world's richest man is paying people in developing countries to stoke racism and division in the US is a factual statement
Nah that one was a fake. Funny though
It's not far off being true though lmao
Yeah. Definitely a core truth in it
https://ibbit.at/post/115286
Pika pika
You sound surprised
Shocked, even.
⡏⠉⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⣿ ⣿⠀⠀⠀⠈⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠛⠉⠁⠀⣿ ⣿⣧⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠿⠿⠿⠻⠿⠿⠟⠿⠛⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣸⣿ ⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠠⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⡟⠀⠀⢰⣹⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣭⣷⠀⠀⠀⠸⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠈⠉⠀⠀⠤⠄⠀⠀⠀⠉⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⢾⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⡠⠤⢄⠀⠀⠀⠠⣿⣿⣷⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⡀⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢄⠀⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠉⠁⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢹⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿
This is what it looks like on my client, and I felt the world needed to see what Absolutely Blasted Pikachu looks like
That Pikachu hurt itself in confusion.
That's fucking great lol
Put a double space at the end of each
line to do a line break
Billionaires are all criminals. Prison
I agree, except that you spelt guillotine incorrectly...
The only way to solve society's problems is to [redacted; my lawyers have advised me not to finish this sentence for legal reasons]
Wait till you find out who's paying them
"Accidentally" my foot, the one with bells on it. The engineers knew.
Whether Elon knew and green-lit it, or even ordered the move as payback for his unceremonious departure from DOGE is anyone's guess. But I stand by what I said earlier, this was intentional - and more power to whoever pushed it to production.
I think it was intentional and killed many birds with one stone - ie: trying to cover his ass in other countries to show that shitter is being transparent, shooting the maga boat that’s already sinking.
Just like the one time reddit released its statistics and the top location was from a US army base.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160406094911/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html
That was in 2013. Reddit stopped publishing these stats after this. Imagine how large the astroturfing is now.
Yakistanis who think it’s everyone against them is fucking poetic.
Have some of your own medicine, why don't you?
When you realize that your social media is tolerable for a day because a US military base lost internet access.
Hey, would you look at that.
The FBI's first and foremost job is national security interests, particularly on identifing foreign actors in the state. The feds got played lmfao
Lmao nah. Feds are in on it
"FBI Agent"
Looks inside the badge
Its just FSB lmao
Kash Patel's FBI? A drunk raccoon could outplay them.
Nobody said the foreign actors weren't foreign raccoons in a coat
I like how the DHS account was from Israel.
The majority are fucking Putin bots or from Xi's 50 Cent Army. Leon Hitler can F-himself too.
Maga people are reverting back to 'I don't like/want to talk about politics."
Nature is
healingstagnating again.Welcome to the internet? Anonymity allows anyone to pretend to be anything, so they are more the carrier of a message than some authenticity based on a name. And where there is a market for a message, people will consume without regard for who said it, or even often without validating the message itself. Caveat emptor baby.
“ the knife was right there, your honor! How could anyone expect me not to start stabbing everyone around me? “
Everybody knows the power behind this is Russia. But nobody mentions it?
Well you're partly right, but this is something all states with the power and motivation to do it are doing
Wasn’t one of his biggest complaints when he bought Twitter was the number of bot accounts? That went well. And I'm assuming most pay $5 month, so he's making bank from them.
Well, we knew at the time that was just a lie to get out of being fixed to buy the company.
Quick, now do Truth Social
Now do the origin of bot accounts pushing topics to the top here on Lemmy.
I don't think many of them pretend to be American pushing America First. I think you'd find that most of them would call themselves globalists in fact.
That said, I always find it funny that Lemmings are shocked to realize the Marxist-Leninists are often from Russia and have Russian or Chinese viewpoints.
I'm kinda offended by this. Lefties, die-hard Marxists in Russia are not pro-Russia and definitely not pro-China.
Also, I rarely see any Russians here, on Lemmy. I have subscribed for several groups, but it's everything Lemmy has.
I'm shocked! SHOCKED! well, not that shocked.
So just confirming what we already knew since this kind of bullshit has been exposed several times already.
wait you mean the fact that we call them influencers and the fact that they are literal widget shills and the fact that they push out political propaganda are all related 😯
No surprise here. A good part of them are probably Russian, anyway.
How the fuck does Musk have security clearance is fucking beyond me
That's the law of unintended consequences, muskyboy.
I will admit that I lack knowledge in this area. "Political influencer" is a foreign concept for me. What I'm wondering is how this matters. I'm not a US citizen, but given enough followers, I could easily have been an anti GOP influencer. I would put my word out against the right wing because I don't want their political movement to spread.
What am I missing here?
You don't have hundreds of thousands of followers and you aren't pretending to be American.
I get that it's bad that people with a large follower base are claiming to be something that they are not, but does that call for legal action? Or does it break with terms of service of xitter or whatever social media they are using? Are influencers legally held to a higher standard due to their line of work? (These are honest questions, not just rhetotical. I honestly don't know.)
Or is the main point that xitter had the information that they were lying, but didn't put their knowledge to action?
It's kind of a mix of things. "Political influencer" is just a new way of saying "propagandist." Especially when it comes to the MAGA movement and fascist extremism rising all across the globe. These are the new KGB initiatives to destabilize Putin's enemies across the globe (and all kinds of similar intelligence agencies, the US does the same thing I'm sure). It's the "outside influence" that Twitter and Facebook were accused of during the last two election cycles in the US, which could have major consequences for Musk and Twitter, and this looks like Twitter trying to get off the hook for that by saying "we gave them the info they needed, we're not at fault for them making the choice to be stupid and believe lies."
But the big thing is that it might shake the faith of the cult when they have to start justifying why they've been listening to the exact kinds of people they hate.
Thank you! This makes a lot of sense.
The issue is that our dictatorship is EXTREMELY unpopular, but they use lies like this to pretend that they are actually loved and you shouldn’t believe your own eyes and ears.