X update unveils foreign MAGA boosters

What happened

Elon Musk’s X over the weekend began allowing users to see where other accounts are based through an “about this account” section. Almost immediately, “people started noticing that many rage-bait accounts focused on U.S. politics appeared to be based outside of the U.S.,” The Verge said. Notably, the update “inadvertently unmasked a number of MAGA accounts” as based in Russia, Nigeria, India and Southeast Asia, UPI said.

Who said what

“When you read content on X, you should be able to verify its authenticity,” the company’s head of product Nikita Bier posted, “including the country an account is located in.” Liberal influencer Harry Sisson, who is using the tool to document the foreign provenance of popular MAGA and “America First” accounts, called it “easily one of the greatest days on this platform.”

“Some right-wing personalities were quick to jump on evidence that many left-wing X users were also not who they claimed to be,” The Verge said. But the “seemingly endless list of fake and troll accounts” mostly “revealed the scope and geographical breadth” of X’s “foreign troll problem.” Some of those trolls are undoubtedly part of state-sponsored foreign influence campaigns, but content creators paid for engagement also have a “financial incentive to cash in on the divisive nature of U.S. politics,” The Daily Beast said. In countries like Nigeria and Bangladesh, “the American dollars paid by X” can “make a big difference to their lives.”

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What next?

X said the new feature “could be partially spoofed by using a VPN to mask a user’s true location,” Fox News said. Bier said there were a “few rough edges” in the rollout that should be resolved by tomorrow.