It has long been known that X (and Twitter before it) is a hotbed of foreign influence campaigns to interfere in American politics. Most of the attention has been on Russian troll farms, which have been targeted by the US government on several occasions. But the launch of X’s About This Account feature may reveal the scope and geographic spread of its foreign troll problem.
Almost immediately after the feature launched, people began noticing that many of the rage-four accounts focused on American politics appeared to be based outside the US. Profiles with names like ULTRAMAGA🇺🇸TRUMP🇺🇸2028 were discovered to be based in Nigeria. A verified account posing as border tsar Tom Homan was found in Eastern Europe. And America_First0? Apparently from Bangladesh. An entire network of “Trump-supporting independent women” claiming to be from the US was actually based in Thailand.
The threads began to grow rapidly, gathering all the MAGA-supporting trolls who claimed to be American, but were actually foreign actors from every corner of the world. Some right-wing personalities were quick to jump on the evidence that many left-wing X users were also not who they claimed to be. In no time, X was flooded with people pointing out an endless list of fake and troll accounts focused on stoking political anger.
Shortly after the feature launched, X removed information about where accounts were created. And disclaimers were placed on the locations where the accounts were based, noting that travel, VPNs and proxies could lead to inaccurate data. However, this is certainly true for some accounts extremely This is also unlikely to be true for the majority of those being called.
Some of these troll accounts are likely state-sponsored influence campaigns. Foreign entities like Russia and China have a vested interest in spreading chaos in the American political system. But it is also possible that many people are motivated by monetary gain. While the earnings from monetization on X may be modest by Western standards, in developing countries it can be life-changing.
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