Breaking news from the everything app: Not everything you see on the everything app is real.
This is not news to you, of course: You are a savvy internet user.
But lots of other people seemed to be shocked to learn that some high-profile accounts on X, the app formerly known as Twitter, are not who they say they are: A new feature on the app lets you see (more or less) where people are posting from, and it turns out that lots of X accounts that position themselves as very interested in American politics and culture are coming from places like India, Thailand and Eastern Europe.
In my version of the internet, this unmasking is suffused with partisan glee, as folks point out “America First” or MAGA accounts that seem to be being made by people very far from America.
But the real surprise isn’t where these accounts are posting from — it’s that anyone’s still surprised.
We’ve known forever that people like to misrepresent their identity online. Sometimes it’s for lolz, sometimes it’s for safety reasons. Sometimes it’s a state-sponsored effort to destabilize a foe.
But the primary reason to type stuff under a fake name is money: The internet can turn outrage into clicks, and clicks into pennies, and if you do it enough, those pennies can add up.
Yes, the Russian military tried to influence the 2016 election by screwing around on social media. But a bunch of Macedonian teenagers were ginning up fake Facebook posts during the election, too — so they could direct traffic to ad-filled blogs.
“Yes, the info in the blogs is bad, false, and misleading but the rationale is that ‘if it gets the people to click on it and engage, then use it,'” one of the teens told BuzzFeed.
There was lots of hand-wringing and investigating into disinformation and the like after the 2016 election. That energy has dissipated, but the core issue remains unchanged: Internet platforms that give users an incentive to reach people and rile them up will find lots of users trying to reach people and rile them up. And that incentive structure may be particularly appealing to people in countries where a few pennies go a long way.
And when Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he didn’t try to fix the problem at all: He accelerated it by creating a new system that paid Twitter users directly for creating engaging posts. He got what he paid for.
Still, it’s too easy to see an opinion you don’t like online and assume it’s the work of an overseas troll farmer. Rage-bait works because it highlights divisions that already exist.
Which means what happens on X — or anywhere else on the internet — isn’t necessarily fake. The money is real, the reach is real, and the effects are real, even if the people posting aren’t who they claim to be.
But it’s also not a reliable map of what people actually think. Most people don’t post on social media at all. A handful of accounts — some real, some not — produce the noise that the rest of us mistake for consensus. This weekend’s depantsing is a reminder to treat all of it with more skepticism, not to tune it out completely.
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