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 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?
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.