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.
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.