It has long been known that X (and Twitter before it) is main venue for foreign influence campaigns to interfere in American politics. Much attention was paid Russian troll farmswhich the US government has target on some cases. But launch X About this account The feature may have revealed the scale and geographic breadth of the foreign troll problem.
Almost immediately after the feature launched, people began to notice that many rage-bait accounts dedicated to US politics seemed to be based outside the US. Profiles with names like ULTRAMAGA🇺🇸TRUMP🇺🇸2028 it turned out that they were based in Nigeria. Verified account posing as the Border King Tom Homan has been traced to Eastern Europe. And America_First0? Apparently from Bangladesh. The whole network “Trump supports independent women” claiming to be from America was actually in Thailand.
The topics quickly began to grow, gathering all sorts of pro-MAGA trolls who claimed to be American but were actually foreign actors from all corners of the globe. Some right personalities were quick to seize on evidence that many left-wing X users were not who they claimed to be either. In the blink of an eye, X was inundated with people shouting a seemingly endless list false And troll The accounts focused on inciting political anger.
Shortly after the launch of this feature X remote information about where accounts were created. Additionally, disclaimers were posted at account locations noting that travel, VPNs, and proxy servers may result in inaccurate data. This is certainly true for some accounts, however this very much This is unlikely to be true even for most of those who are called.
Some of these troll accounts are likely state-sponsored influence campaigns. Foreign organizations such as Russia and China are interested in wreaking havoc in the American political system. But it is also likely that many are motivated by monetary gain. Bye earnings from monetization by X may be negligible by Western standards, but could make a difference in the lives of developing countries.
