A new update on X that makes it possible to see users’ locations has cast doubt on whether some of the most prominent Make America Great Again (MAGA) accounts on the platform are actually being operated from inside the United States. Since the platform enabled the “about this account” feature, it has become clear that several accounts with thousands of followers devoted to President Donald Trump’s movement are in fact located outside the country.
Among the accounts that raised alarms are @MAGANationX, operated from Eastern Europe; @DarkMagaCoin, which posts content from Thailand; @MAGA100X, active in Germany; @ScopeMaga_ in Nigeria; and @RightScopee in Egypt. Following this update, attention also turned to other accounts with a significant presence on X whose profiles began to be scrutinized even though, unlike the accounts supporting the U.S. president, they are more clearly global — such as those supporting Palestine.
The controversy over pro-Trump profiles operated from abroad has resurfaced years after the first judicial and journalist investigations revealed armies of bots linked to Russia that carried out a massive social-media campaign against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 U.S. elections. In the months leading up to the vote, the so-called Internet Research Agency, a nominally independent company based in St. Petersburg but closely tied to the Putin regime, impersonated U.S. citizens to spread fake news in support of Trump’s candidacy. The case led to an FBI investigation and an order to arrest 12 Russian military intelligence officers charged with conspiracy.
Since then, the presence of bots on social networks has been taken almost for granted, and their impact — whether commercial or political — has become nearly impossible to measure. In the current situation, however, no investigation has been launched into the possible involvement of foreign governments.
The new transparency feature on the social network, formerly known as Twitter, also sparked fake news. In the first hours after it went live, an image circulated claiming that the account of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was supposedly being run from Israel. “I can’t believe we have to say this, but this account has only ever been run and operated from the United States. Screenshots are easy to forge,” the DHS account posted.
Nikita Bier, the platform’s head of product, debunked these reports and explained that government organizations operating with gray-check verification are exempt from this measure to avoid risk of doxxing — the online disclosure of private data without a person’s or entity’s consent. “The DHS has only shown IPs from the United States since account creation,” he shared on X. So far, X has not specified exactly how it obtains users’ locations, but Bier has clarified that “accuracy will be nearly 99.99%“ and that any errors will be fixed in the coming days.
The platform announced the measure as a way to help users assess the authenticity of the content they consume and to reduce the presence of bots that spread spam or false news. The problem of automated accounts that mass-produce messages has been one of the issues Elon Musk has placed at the center of his agenda since acquiring Twitter in 2022. Just last month, X executives announced that they had removed 1.7 million accounts that replied under posts with irrelevant content, such as promotional links, scams, and meaningless phrases. In the coming months, efforts will focus on restricting bot content in Direct Messages.
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