Elon Musk Praised for New Feature Revealing Many Political X Accounts Are Foreign: ‘Stupendous Act of Patriotism’
Allison Robbert/Pool via AP
Elon Musk received a wave of praise over the weekend after his developers at X rolled out a new feature showing the global location of accounts, revealing many influencers in U.S. politics are actually based overseas.
While cybersecurity experts and general social media users have long warned of bots and foreign influence campaigns maliciously working to stir up anger, resentment, and outright hate within U.S. politics with inflamatory rhetoric online, Musk has finally given concrete proof that this is the case. Many of the accounts that have been revealed to be overseas are branded as pro-Trump MAGA accounts or part of Nick Fuentes’s “Groypers.” Fans of the new feature were also quick to point out the abundance of pro-Palestinian accounts claiming to be reporting from inside Gaza or the U.S., that were in fact as far away as Australia or Indonesia.
Pro-Trump NewsNation host Batya Ungar Sargon shared a MAGA-branded account that was revealed to be based in Bangladesh and wrote, “Exposing where these accounts are located was a stupendous act of patriotism. Thank you @elonmusk and thank you @KatiePavlich whose idea it was!”
Reason’s Robby Soave added, “I was reflexively disinclined to believe it was all foreign accounts promoting racism and anti-Semitism under the guise of the pro-Trump America First banner. That sounded too easy, and similar to the (now debunked) idea that all the Trump content on Facebook in 2016 was actually Russian bots.”
“But… this ‘account based in’ feature actually has unmaked tons of groypers as Pakistani, as far as I can tell? Very useful feature, and kudos to Elon Musk and the X team for implementing it. The hate is not coming from inside the house!” he added.
X does place a disclaimer of sorts next to the location information, noting, “The country or region that an account is based can be impacted by recent travel or temporary relocation. This data may not be accurate and can change periodically.”
Left-leaning pundit Micah Erfan shared screenshots of several hard-right accounts — including accounts affiliated with Fuentes that were revealed to be in countries like Pakistan and Thailand — and commented, “This is total armageddon for the online right. It’s looking like half of their large accounts were foreigners posing as Americans all along.”
The Dispatch’s Jonah Goldberg shared several accounts being unmasked over the weekend and added, “This country of origin feature is real progress and I applaud it.”
Below are some more reactions:
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