Many of the most influential personalities in the “Make America great again” (Maga) movement on X are based outside of the US, including Russia, Nigeria and India, a new transparency feature on the social media site has revealed.
The new tool, called “about this account”, became available on Friday to users of the Elon Musk-owned platform. It allows anyone to see where an account is located, when it joined the platform, how often its username has been changed, and how the X app was downloaded.
As soon as the update was rolled out, users found numerous Maga and rightwing influencers who presented themselves as patriotic Americans were operating from other countries.
“This is easily one of the greatest days on this platform,” wrote the liberal influencer Harry Sisson. “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.”
The account MAGANationX, with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We The People”, is actually operated from eastern Europe, according to the Daily Beast. Another popular profile, IvankaNews, an Ivanka Trump fan account with about 1 million followers that frequently posts about illegal immigration, Islam and support for Trump, was revealed to be based in Nigeria.
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; as of Sunday, the user named in the post appeared to have a US location, though X had flagged the possible use of a VPN, which allows users to mask their real location. Many in the comments posted other examples they found.
Bots spreading misinformation and propaganda have 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.
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