Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Actors
www.thedailybeast.com
A new feature on Elon Musk’s X has given deeper insight into the online “America First” movement.

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.

  • ZeroGravitas@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    11·
    3 hours ago

    “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.

  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
    17·
    6 hours ago

    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

  • Guy Ingonito@reddthat.com
    59·
    7 hours ago

    The world’s richest man is paying people in developing countries to stoke racism and division in the US is a factual statement

  • xxce2AAb@feddit.dk
    144·
    9 hours ago

    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.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
      15·
      7 hours ago

      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.

    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      23·
      9 hours ago

      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.”

  • Greddan@feddit.org
    798·
    11 hours ago

    Didn’t this also reveal that the Department of Homeland Security twitter account is ran from Israel?

        • drzoidberg@lemmy.world
          24·
          9 hours ago

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  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
    223·
    11 hours ago

    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.

    • watson@lemmy.world
      15·
      10 hours ago

      “ the knife was right there, your honor! How could anyone expect me not to start stabbing everyone around me? “

  • foggy@lemmy.world
    8·
    10 hours ago

    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 😯