About all those MAGA Twitter/X accounts

[mister_coffee]

People are already working out how to evade it.

It certainly works much better if you are posting from your phone than if you are posting from a laptop.

What is also impressive is that the same information also tells if the person posts through a VPN and sometimes even which VPN they are using.

One thing that is coming out is that this isn't being done on any real-time basis, but periodically done for most active users. New users and users who haven't been active for a while will not have location information.

[mister_coffee]

Examples of foreign-based accounts
MAGA Nation: An account with nearly 400,000 followers, described as a "Patriot Voice," is operated from Eastern Europe.
America First: An account with over 67,000 followers that shares pro-Trump content and claims to be based in the U.S. is actually located in Bangladesh.
IvankaNews: A fan account with about 1 million followers was found to be based in Nigeria, though X has since suspended it.
Dark Maga: A smaller account with approximately 15,000 followers is run from Thailand.
MAGA Scope: An account with over 51,000 followers is based in Nigeria.
MAGA Beacon: An account that posts about American politics is based in south Asia.
Pro-Independence Accounts: Accounts claiming to be Scottish Democrats have been found to be accessing X from Iran.

Source: The Google

[Rideback]

FB can be a sewer but there's ways to control that better now. Setting privacy to the max which cuts out access from non friends works wonders and accepting friend requests only from those who are friends with existing friends helps. I've come round to a whole different usage of FB where I follow scientists, historians, lawyers, law enforcement, climate experts and a reality based group of everyday people. It makes the gathering and understanding of stats and news a better experience.

As a monitor and admin of several larger pages, that are professional, I've learned what it takes to ferret out the trolls who want to join or post nonsense. And then there's the people who are well meaning who just get over excited and under informed who just want to get their name on the page.

It's been interesting to watch Bluesky's reaction to trolls and impersonators. There's zero tolerance for it.

[mister_coffee]

This problem isn't new.

I remember back when I was on Facebook and it wasn't a total sewer there was a pretty continuous influx of people who claimed to be from the area (rarely from the valley, but Okanogan/Omak/Tonasket and Chelan were well-represented) and were obviously not from the area. The obvious poor translation of 2010-era Google Translate was only one tell. Most of the time they would pop up, make a handful and trolly posts and memes, and be gone forever.

There were a few laughs when someone posted that they lived in Gilbert or Molson or Ruby. All of which are ghost towns.

Sometime around that time the Fake People scam moved from obvious organized crime mostly focused on scams and identity theft to actual foreign intelligence and influence operations.

Like I said, this needs to be viewed as an ongoing public safety and national security problem.

[Rideback]

It's one thing to be annoyed when having to argue with trolls, but to find out that most of them reside offshore only confirms what most of us have guessed all these years.

For those who have agreed with these account holders, followed them, been influenced by them, supported them and used their tutorials on how to argue no doubt it's damn embarrassing.

[just-jim]

.
Yep……watching MAGA starting to unravel is going to be interesting. And fraught with what David mentions.

[mister_coffee]

While the schadenfreude gives me joy, at the bottom of this is a serious national security and public safety risk.

[Rideback]

The New Republic reports:
Elon Musk’s latest feature on X has had some shocking and unintended consequences.
Starting Friday, X users were able to use a new “about this account” feature to see what country accounts were based in. And for many “America First” posters, this revealed an inconvenient truth, as reported by The Daily Beast.
For example, one account literally named “America First”—with 67,000 followers—seems to be based not in the U.S., but in Bangladesh.
Another popular conservative account, MAGA Nation, with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio that reads, “Standing strong with President Trump | America First | Patriot Voice for We The People,” is apparently based in Eastern Europe.
And an Ivanka News fanpage with 1 million followers that posts things like, “Does the spread of Islam on American soil concern you?” is based in Nigeria.
Twitter users rounded up dozens of these accounts, sharing their disbelief. Some Democratic influencers rejoiced:
Harry Sisson, a Gen-Z, pro-Biden creator, said, “This is easily one of the greatest days on this platform. Seeing all of these MAGA accounts get exposed as foreign actors trying to destroy the United States is a complete vindication of Democrats, like myself and many on here, who have been warning about this.”