Many of the MAGA influencers outed as living in countries like Nigeria and Bangladesh have since vanished from X.
The users, who had over a million followers between them, had their country of origin exposed over the weekend as part of a new X feature that now shows where accounts were created and how their owners downloaded the social platform’s app.
Four prominent accounts unmasked by the feature—DarkMAGA, MagaScope, WilliamAlbrech, and IvankaNews_—now show as being “suspended” for violating “X rules,” though it is unclear which. X’s website says it bars users who pretend to be someone they are not—something all the accounts appear to be guilty of.
Did these X admins not realize the fallout or was there some other intended purpose?
I can smell the outrage from here.
They are probably already back with new names. Or the rest of their names.
Twitter should be nationalized in the public interest and made the online public square like the national mall. Fully transparent and accountable.
I think you mean, X should be nationalized like our social security numbers have been. It’s only fair, the piece of shit who runs it is the only reason that even happened, why not keep things fair?
Impartial government owned news is not possible.
To hear fElon tell it, that’s what he thought Twitter was before, and what he aimed for Xitter to uphold…
LOL. Sorry, hard to type that w/o laughing.
I wonder if this will actually affect some upcoming election outcomes.
And now I think every other major commercial platform in use in the United States should do the same…
to later reappear with different username
This will 100% happen
your 9 days old account makes me think you’re probably familiar with the technique
You are fucking disgusting and pathetic :3
And I don’t even need to look at your account details to know that.
lol, you shouldn’t uncover your alt accounts like that
Maybe try not being followers who allow ourselves to be influenced. I think if you had described this social media situation to average people 20 years ago most would have seen it as dystopian, evil even. But because it happened so gradually it gained acceptance.
I guess what I’m saying is we should get the hell rid of it all so eventually public opinion won’t be swayed by cheap foreign labor, bots, and people who just want to burn it all down.
But we won’t because too many think all this is better than the world before it existed.
/rant
If only we could go back to the halcyon days of twenty years ago, when people were not influenced by talkshow hosts, athletes hawking household goods, and tabloids breathlessly reporting on actors and socialites.
I mean… 20 years ago when we only had Xanga, MySpace, Friendster, LiveJournal, LinkedIn, and many others. Even Facebook is 21 years old now… though it didn’t become available for everyone for a couple years after that.
That requires a population that is educated and can critically read and analyze media. Don’t think any country in the world has that.
Okay, you’ve swayed my opinion on this.
They’ll be back.
And with greater VPNs
This mass user exodus sponsored by ExpressVPN™
Well, duh. The future is full of sponsorships! The question is, which corporation do you fight for?
Probably already are
And in greater numbers.
I wonder. People saying it isn’t VPNs aren’t necessarily wrong but I do want to say it’s likely they are using bot networks to mass create accounts and those might use IP rotation. Those IPs can come from any fucking place. I’ve only seen it from scraping operations, but I bet it’s necessary when mass operating bullshit accounts.
US proxies exist, but they’re more expensive and wouldn’t make as much sense for mass creating if your goal is just to avoid getting blocked.
I’m not sure I can believe that Elon thought this wouldn’t have a downside. He had to know so many right-wing chud accounts weren’t US based.
I was assuming he did this as a way to expose the already-marginalized or something. Did he have a reason for doing this?
Maybe he just weighed the ups/downs for the moment. He didn’t have the bot farms up trying to convince people to vote for Trump and sway public opinion anymore maybe. Maybe he made the call that exposing accounts and introducing the idea he can expose them a threat to any political upstarts wanting to take the next monarchy grasp. He can expose the accounts he wants, while spending less money having to combat any political opposition that may want to run similar campaign tactics that they used.
There are members who wanted to go further into “America first” bologna, maybe he realized that won’t be beneficial for him long term finally
bRuTaL
Why don’t they just use vpns?
That’s an extra cost, until the oopsiedaisy of revealing their location the cost was superfluous. The new accounts will use them.
That makes sense.
may be survivorship bias, the ones that didn’t use it got caught
If all else fails maybe he could try not being a morally bankrupt pos and get some therapy to get people to like him. in all honesty he’s irredeemable and needs to go to prison though
I don’t understand it…Ehat are the gains at lying about country here?
The accounts are largely based in countries that are suspected by many to be manipulating US public opinion (e.g.Russia/Israel) or from countries with lots of click farms, scam centers, and other “engagement” services.
It showed how much of the American right-wing social media sphere wasn’t legitimately American in origin.
It basically exposed all these accounts as being fake, and spreading MAGA conspiracy bullshit in USA
Exhibit A
Totally irrelevant, but something about her posture/clothing looks so physically uncomfortable to me and I can’t put my finger on it.
Well she’s cold enough to keep wearing her down jacket and have her non-typing hand tucked in. She’s straight upright, scooting her chair to reach along the row. No lolling back with thigh-highs on the desk for her.
“America First!”
-some paid troll in Russia
Manipulating people. Pushing value and rhetoric “as a fellow American” when you’re a bot in Russia.
I heard it was because they used VPNs! (/s if needed)
