X’s location update exposes international troll industry

A new transparency feature on X has revealed that many politically influential US accounts, including pro-Trump ones with hundreds of thousands of followers, are actually based overseas.

“About This Account”, which rolled out globally on Friday, allows any user to tap on another user’s sign-up date to see where that account is located. X’s director of product Nikita Bier called it “an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square”. But it has brought with it “a wave of scrutiny” into “the provenance of political accounts”, said The New York Times.

‘Armageddon for the online right’

The new feature has “revealed the scope and geographical breadth” of X’s “foreign troll problem”, said The Verge. Although “some right-wing personalities were quick to jump on evidence that many left-wing X users were also not who they claimed to be”, it is the sheer number of “rage-bait” pro-Maga accounts based outside America that has caught the most attention in the US.

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An account called MAGANationX, for example, which has nearly 400,000 followers, is based in Eastern Europe, and IvankaNews_, which had over a million followers before being suspended this week and frequently posted about the dangers of Islam, is operated from Nigeria. Digital investigator Benjamin Strick has unearthed an entire network of “Trump-supporting independent women” who say they are “real Americans“ but are actually located in Thailand.

Posting a gallery of Maga accounts apparently based in Japan, New Zealand, and Pakistan, left-wing influencer Micah Erfan said X’s new location feature is a “total Armageddon for the online right. It’s looking like half of their large accounts were foreigners posing as Americans all along.”

A joint investigation last year by CNN and the Centre for Information Resilience revealed dozens of social media accounts with a “pattern of inauthentic behaviour” that “post about divisive issues in US politics in a bid to exploit pre-existing tensions” and “push pro-Trump content”. And with so many Maga influencer accounts now revealed to originate outside the US, “users are questioning the ongoing interference in American politics by foreign adversaries”, said The Daily Beast.

‘A few rough edges’

A measure of caution over the newly revealed X account locations is needed, however. “Some users have complained that their listed location is wildly inaccurate,” said Tech Crunch. And X’s Bier has acknowledged that “data was not 100% for old accounts” and the new feature has “a few rough edges” to iron out.

While it is true that factors such as travel, VPNs and proxies could lead to inaccurate location data, it is “extremely unlikely to be true for even a majority of those being called out”, said The Verge.

Some of these trolls are undoubtedly part of state-sponsored foreign influence campaigns, said The Daily Beast, but content creators who are paid for posts that drive engagement also have a “financial incentive to cash in on the divisive nature of US politics”. For those in countries like Nigeria and Bangladesh, “the American dollars paid by X” can “make a big difference to their lives.”