A new feature on X has revealed that a number of major MAGA accounts on the platform are operated by people based overseas. And in the days since these accounts were exposed, President Donald Trump has continued boosting several of them.
Many of the accounts, which have large followings and claim to be conservative people based in Texas or “America First” accounts “promoting good resisting evil,” are actually operated everywhere from Chile and Nigeria to Russia and across eastern Europe.
These accounts largely post about divisive issues, including immigration, gender, and Israel. In one instance, a verified account called MAGA NATION with almost 400,000 followers and the American flag in its screen name was revealed to be operated from a non-EU country in eastern Europe. Many of the accounts feature the names of members of the Trump family, including an Ivanka Trump news account with over 1 million followers that was based in Nigeria. The account has since been suspended.
On Saturday, Trump shared on Truth Social a screenshot of an X post from an account called “Fan Trump Army.” The account has over 500,000 followers and features an image of Trump as its profile picture. The account operator, according to the new X location feature, is based in India. The account is followed by several people convicted for their parts in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as well as disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
In recent days, the account holder changed their bio to read: “An Indian who loves America, President Trump, Musk!” An earlier version of the account’s bio, however, made no mention of the account being run by someone in India.
On Sunday, Trump shared another screenshot of an X post on Truth Social, this time from a verified X account with the screen name: “Commentary Donald J. Trump.”
“Would you support the idea of foreign-born citizens be barred from running for office? Yes or No,” reads the screenshot. The post also featured a picture of Representative Ilhan Omar with Omar Fateh, a Somali-American lawmaker in Minnesota who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Minneapolis earlier this month. The account has a picture of the president as its profile picture with a bald eagle in front of the American flag as its background picture. According to X’s new feature, the account appears to be run from somewhere in Africa. (In some cases, X doesn’t specify the country, only the continent or region.)
In responses to Trump’s post, many called for a ban on foreign-born citizens holding political office, with some posters going further and calling for Omar and Fateh to be deported.
The new location feature on X was first shared last month by X’s head of product Nikita Bier as a way for the company to bring more transparency to a platform which has struggled to deal with bot accounts. “When you read content on X, you should be able to verify its authenticity. This is critical to getting a pulse on important issues happening in the world,” Bier wrote on X in October. “As part of that, we’re experimenting with displaying new information on profiles, including which country an account is based, among other details.”
The feature was initially available to some users on Friday. It was quickly pulled soon after screenshots appeared to show the location of the official Department of Homeland Security account as Israel. Bier dismissed the screenshots as “misinformation.” WIRED was not able to see the location information in real time on Friday.
Bier subsequently said the location feature was pulled “because the account creation country was incorrect on a very small subset of old accounts, due to IP ranges changing over time.” Bier also wrote on X that the accuracy of the location information would be upgraded on Monday.
Despite the revelations, on Friday the White House appeared to mock those concerned that many MAGA accounts were run by foreign actors, posting on X a mocked up screenshot that showed the White House account location as: “Rent Free in Democrats’ Heads.”
The post Trump Is Boosting MAGA X Accounts Operating Overseas appeared first on Wired.
