Edit 3: The Daily Beast has now confirmed some locations in the tweet:
Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-influencers-accidentally-unmasked-as-foreign-actors/
Edit 2: Here is another one from a commenter in the comments. Again, take locations with a grain of salt:
A large number of MAGA social media influencers were exposed over the weekend as being being based in other countries.
Internet erupts as MAGA influencers exposed for being based in other countries
Edit: This was reported as having zero citations and they’re right. I haven’t had my coffee yet. Because I was interested, I did find this article about it saying that it was removed quickly. Please take this with a grain of salt as to the locations.
It’s unclear exactly why X quickly removed the feature shortly after rolling it out to the public. However, Bier replied to some X users who were reporting that their “About this account” was showing inaccurate information, which may be the reason why the feature was taken down.
We’ll soon find out if Musk’s social media platform reinstates the feature.
https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-rolls-out-country-of-origin-profiles-then-removes-it
This is attracting a lot of trolls. I’m going to leave it up for a little while, but don’t take the bait please. If I see bait, I’m removing the chain, not just the OG comment.
Nigeria and Bangladesh sound like VPN locations, honestly, not actual user locations though.
Remember. Elon is a problematic drug addict but Twitter had this information long before he was in charge and they were perfectly content with this fact.
Tech companies are not your friend and don’t give a shit about your cause or your morals.
I think the amusing part is Musk didn’t bother to check over that data before saying it should go live. Mean I’m pretty sure I saw it was removed soon after, but I was mostly skimming. Think he’s knows enough that 10mins is all the Internet needs., and 10min is generous.
Seriously what person who manipulates social platforms wouldn’t think, well let’s give this data a once over for the big voices I want amplified?
It may be an oversight but it’s more likely he’s not overly intelligent. Seriously when manipulation via social media is a goal that’s a pretty high fucking priority. Like he should have a report from a team checking that out before it went live. Maybe he tried but fired anyone competent enough but if you’re a billionaire you should have a few (competent) teams ready for various tasks.
Eh that’s assuming he even knows what is going on at Twitter.
He purged like 75 percent of the company. The only ones left are the ones with no other options.
Pretty sure his focus is on getting Tesla to give him ever increasing compensation while it starts to circle the drain.
Is there any source for this huge accusation that isn’t a blurry picture of text from someone you’ve never heard of? Come on Lemmy, you’re better than this.
Thats what i usually come to the comments for but ive found a lot of comments are just riding the confirmation bias so I either have to check myself or forget about it because im tired boss
Bad news, everyone. We have detected cockroaches in the kitchen.
The good news is that we just turned off the lights, so now we can’t see them.
America did that for COVID, which is why we had such low numbers.
Oh and all those COVID deaths? Natural causes.
Turning the lights off does not matter anymore, because these accounts glow in the dark. Thats what they look like right now:
Holy moley, that’s a perfect metaphor, because we all know how cockroach behavior & numbers accelerate when they’re in the dark.
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If that is true then Musk & Twitter 100% knew about it before disclosing location to other users.
Musk is both stupid enough and narcissitic enough to have legitimately thought his charm and personality were making MAGA flock to him on his own personal “I need my ego stroked” site. It’s quite possible it never even occured to him that none of it was real.
No way in hell. Musk was probably like “let’s show location guys, think of how much more noticing we could do tehe!”
And then he got results that triggered him, so he had them turn it off
I don’t think Elmo has an ego small enough to independently even consider the idea that his sycophants might be largely fake.
Only if they cared enough to analyse the data though
There need to be real consequences for this. This is mass propaganda that affects geopolitics, interferes in elections, undermines democracy and encourages people into a worldview that is destined for conflict.
Consequences imposed by whom? The US is currently ruled by the very powers who are employing these accounts.
ruled by
I’d say controlled by is more accurate, because the people who factually rule the US are not based outside of the US.
I never said they were. I said they were employing these accounts. But anyway, the oligarchs who rule the US are not all based in the US.
I got your point, just tried to make the distinction between ruling and controlling, because in my eyes the verb ruling is for those who are factually in charge (the people in official positions) and controlling is a better fit for those that are de facto in charge (oligarchs, international corpo’s, foreign state actors etc).
the people who factually rule the US are not based outside of the US.
Krasnov heartily agrees. As does his boss, Putin.
They are the boss, i agree, but the factually Trump is in the highest position and factually nobody rules over him. I’m not argueing that reality is different, because it’s obvious Trump is behaving as a russian asset.
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Good to see Elon end up revealing this.
Maybe the real CIA-funded third world nation coups were the bots we made along the way
I don’t live in america, nor want to, yet I’m also wanting to influence the americans…to do something about the orange kiddie fiddling rapist that they voted in, twice!
Same. Whatever happens in USA tends to rub off on Europe, either through cultural impact, or through propaganda.
Sadly, as fucked up as it is, america has an influence on MANY cultures and societies. What happens in that barren wasteland affects soooo many other countries.
We still have our lovely national parks… For now… Culturally though, eugh.
I’ve always wanted to visit yellowstone national park, but you couldn’t pay me to go to the USA.
It is a very pretty and strange place. I enjoyed the time I got to spend there.
More like fear-ridden shithole. But potato tomato.
If america has a vold, the rest of the world gets sick. And right now, it’s bleeding out of the asshole.
Save yourself. That place is a lost cause.
Honestly, I don’t care what happens over there. I just want that disgusting piece of shit to feel some serious consequences before he dies (…of a painful and incurable disease, hopefully)
Real, it’s like trying to save the Roman Empire at this point lol
That’s what happens when you monetize engagement…
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I didn’t say this party bites would ve swung it. I said third party and the people who stayed at home instead of going to vote, because they’ve read “don’t vote genocide joe” spam online and it carried over even after Joe stepped down and Kamala tried running.
Just make people apathetic about the vote. That’s it. That was the Russian strategy, because that was the only way Trump would win and Trump winning was the only out left for Putin in regards to a lot of things.
One way to avoid such criticism is to not participate in Genocide. It works pretty well for me.
I thought, third party got a very insignificant amount of votes that would not turn the results even if they voted Dems
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…was anyone surprised?..
I don’t know too much about American politics, but I am surprised with Nigeria and Bangladesh
Countries where salaries are low and English is high.
I mean, imagine paying a poor person $50 to yell at Wells Fargo for a week. That’s pretty much this.
$50 to yell at Wells Fargo for a week.
I’d do it for free.
So, if the USA want to minimize the problem, (no, autocorrect, not “use GPT”) they have to lift these and similar countries to western pay standard?
They’re also hotbeds for running phone scams for the same reasons. Lots of people with English skills and desperate poverty willing to do evil things for money.
Cheap labor that Russia can afford.
Cheap natively english-speaking labour, to be precise.
…have you seen the offshore accounts of American manufactureers?..
I don’t think I’ve ever seen any manufacturer account
…surely?..
Grok is this real
…beep, boop … No, this can’t be real, because it would be stupid and utterly unscrupulous deception of users. So it can’t be real, since X is owned by Elon Musk, the most handsome, responsible, and intelligent person in the world. … boop, boop…
/s
See also:
Internet erupts as MAGA influencers exposed for being based in other countries
and
Elon Musk’s X rolls out feature that shows users’ country of origin – then suddenly removes it
Mashable said it’s because users were reporting innacuracies for their own locations, and Raw Story doesn’t have any metrics to support their claim… as usual. I couldn’t find anything on the number of maga accounts from other countries.
Not to say astroturfing isn’t happening, there’s foreign interference for sure and some of those screenshots are probably legit. It’s just more likely that Xitter’s broken and their new feature didn’t work.
хеллоу феллоу тексанс, хау ду ю ду?
Yes, it’s very likely that it’s broken in a very peculiar sort of way that thinks MAGA posts are from three specific countries, one of them being Russia.
To quote what I just wrote:
Not to say astroturfing isn’t happening, there’s foreign interference for sure and some of those screenshots are probably legit.
Where can I find out how many maga accounts were from those three countries?
If this were 15 years ago, sure, I’d accept that “it’s just more likely that Xitter’s broken” but not now. Not after the shenanigans Musk has played over and over. The benefit of the doubt is gone for that fascist.
Yes, it may well be that they have once again released an unfinished, flawed feature far too early.
I’m not saying that it’s necessarily due to the possibly unintended transparency regarding right-wing extremist accounts. It’s just that it apparently led to some accounts being visible as being maintained from abroad, even though they insist so much on “America first” and so on. I just wanted to point out that it’s a strange coincidence that this feature was immediately withdrawn as soon as this apparently became visible to the users.
Of course, there may be other reasons for rolling back this feature, but with Musk, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it with regards to his political allies, since he clearly has an agenda that aligns with this kind of ideology (astroturfing or not).
I can’t judge this myself because I stay as far away from xitter as possible. So I only know what I’ve seen in the media reports – and I don’t think there’s much reliable information out there.
So yes, it’s speculation, but it doesn’t seem impossible at all that the situation is as described in the post. I just wanted to back this up with some other sources that aren’t xitter.
My issue wasn’t with the claim, it was with the supporting evidence. Raw Story doesn’t have a great fact checking record, and I couldn’t find anything to support the number of maga accounts that turned out to be foreign.
Not saying I don’t believe it, just saying I’m skeptical until I see credible data.
Cock is this real
Hard to say — let’s check Pornhub for relevant citations.
Looks like someone asked Grok and archived it for posterity. https://archive.is/kM8aq
