User X

Foreign political message massage

Thursday, December 4, 2025

Elon Musk’s social media company “X” unveiled a new feature last week that showed the approximate location of users along with their accounts. The news spread fast when the feature showed that a lot of popular MAGA- and Trump-favoring posters were most likely residing overseas while claiming to be stateside.

The story reported by the Associated Press was probably one of the best of its kind:

Elon Musk’s X unveiled a feature Saturday that lets users see where an account is based. Online sleuths and experts quickly found that many popular accounts posting in support of the MAGA movement to thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, are based outside the United States — raising concerns about foreign influence on U.S. politics.

Researchers at NewsGuard, a firm that tracks online misinformation, identified several popular accounts — purportedly run by Americans interested in politics – that instead were based in Eastern Europe, Asia or Africa.

The accounts were leading disseminators of some misleading and polarizing claims about U.S. politics, including ones that said Democrats bribed the moderators of a 2024 presidential debate.

The news made for a lot of media noise. And, rightly so, in my view. For a change it was news that happened to be highly newsworthy, and not something blown out of proportion. Some stories suggested that offline MAGA- and Trump-supporting fans were unhappy to learn they were being apparently duped.

The only reason I bring it up now is that it is worth not forgetting about. The foreign malefactors behind these and many other toxic social media accounts are legion. The ones exposed in the event were quick to come up with excuses, or to shut down and (presumably) reopen under a new name and with better concealment. Their numbers on other sites are likely to be high, too.

Their sole purpose is to inject toxins into the American body politic. Their aim is to keep us fighting among ourselves. Enemies of the West are making substantial investments in keeping us in disarray.

On this rare occasion, it was political news you can use. These manipulative efforts probably won’t ever be this visible ever again.