A new update from Since the platform enabled the “About This Account” feature, it has become clear that several accounts with thousands of followers dedicated to President Donald Trump’s movement are actually located outside of the country.
Among the accounts that raised the alarms were @MAGANationX, run from Eastern Europe; @DarkMagaCoin, which publishes content from Thailand; @MAGA100X, active in Germany; @ScopeMaga_ in Nigeria; and @RightScopee in Egypt. Starting from this update, the focus has also been extended to other accounts with a significant presence on
The controversy over pro-Trump profiles managed from abroad resurfaces years after the first journalistic and judicial investigations that revealed armies of bots linked to Russia that launched a massive campaign on social networks against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 US elections. In the months preceding the elections, the so-called Internet Research Agency, a nominally independent company based in St. Petersburg but closely linked to the Putin regime, posed as US citizens to spread Fake news benefiting Trump’s candidacy. The case led to an FBI investigation and the arrest of 12 Russian military intelligence officers accused of conspiracy.
Since then, the presence of bots on social media has been virtually taken for granted and their impact, both commercial and political, has become almost impossible to measure. In the current situation, however, no investigation has been launched into possible involvement of foreign governments.
The new transparency feature of the social network, formerly known as Twitter, has also caused hoaxes. In the first hours after the authorization, an image circulated purporting to show that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) account would be handled by Israel. “I can’t believe we have to say this, but this account was only operated from the United States. Screenshots are easy to fake,” was written by the DHS account.
Nikita Bier, product manager of the platform, denied these reports and explained that government organizations operating with gray verification are exempt from this measure to avoid risks of doxxingas is known the dissemination of private data over the Internet without the consent of a person or entity. “DHS has only registered IPs from the United States since the account was created,” he wrote. Until now
The platform announced the measure as a way to help its users identify the veracity of the content they consume and to reduce the presence of bots that publish spam or fake news on the social network. The problem of automated accounts reproducing messages en masse has been one of the items that Elon Musk has put at the center of his agenda since he acquired Twitter in 2022. Just last month, executives from In the coming months efforts will focus on limiting bot content in direct messages.
