this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
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The accounts being discussed here have pushed agendas within the US, and commented on US politics regularly. Many are also named to echo political movements, like some MAGA accounts.

However, these ‘political influencers’ have been found to be based outside the US, raising questions about the motives.

One profile going by 'MAGA NATION' with a follower count of over 392,000, is based out of eastern Europe. Similarly, ‘Dark Maga’ a page with over 15,000 followers is based out of Thailand. ‘MAGA Scope’ which boasts over 51,000 followers is actually operated out of Nigeria, and ‘America First’, an account with over 67,000 followers is based out of Bangladesh.

“At this time thousands of MAGA-aligned influencer accounts and large political pages that claim to be based in the U.S. are now being investigated and exposed with many of them traced to India, Nigeria, and other countries,” a news aggregator page on X noted.

Archive: https://archive.ph/DYs5O

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[–] Burninator05@lemmy.world 71 points 4 days ago (2 children)

...Democratic cicles...

Proceeds to list 4 MAGA accounts

I'm not claiming that left leaving policics is immune to this but it feels like there are a lot more prolific right leaning ones.

It's kinda funny really. Outside influencers push the right opinions because it will destabilize the country. But they do it by saying the left will destroy the country.

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Not the best headline in the world, I know. It rolled out in the middle night so only a few outlets across the pond caught wind of it first.

[–] SaraTonin@lemmy.world 119 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The shocking thing here is not that there are MAGA accounts from outside the US, but that twitter introduced a feature which would expose that

The thing about lying, is you have to keep doing it and be really good at it to never get caught lying ever again. Telling the truth is so much less complicated and avoids situations like this from happening.

Every new feature Twitter adds just increases the chance that they're going to undo something they've been lying about/hiding all these years.

[–] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 days ago

Melon doesn't think that far. He fired most staffs that would disagree with him, remember?

It adds to the fact his other companies like SpaceX are run by competent people and not him. He is just someone with very poor impulse control sitting at the very top, just to manipulate the markets.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 197 points 4 days ago (4 children)

I do find it strange that this is surprising to some.

It’s been pretty obvious to us external observers.

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 79 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

At the time, the bot accounts claim was always difficult to prove. There were mountains of anecdotal evidence but nothing concrete. Not anymore.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 24 points 4 days ago

The thing that did it for me was several years ago when Russia disconnected the whole country from the Internet for a day and Reddit instantly transformed. Nearly all of the trolls in political threads disappeared, and discussions became nicer and way more the left-leaning.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 43 points 4 days ago

Yes; as with so many revelations, the facts shouldn’t be surprising, but the evidence is actionable where the assumptions weren’t.

[–] EmilieEasie@lemmynsfw.com 37 points 4 days ago (7 children)

I guess I'm a little surprised at the diversity of where these pages are based, lmao. I thought it would be a lot more Russia, Israel.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 24 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Plenty of troll farms are in third world countries, which are paid by powerful state actors behind the scenes, exploiting the economic desperation of people from these countries. Last year's country-wide anti-immigration riot in the UK started with a single post of a fake news, which has been traced to a user in Pakistan. The user was interviewed and said he was simply paid and didn't think there will be profound consequences.

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 11 points 4 days ago

A lot of troll farms were raided during the Biden era. While it wasn't enough to change the tide, I can imagine that combined with Russia's war on Ukraine being a prime motivation for the administration's interest in AI.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 25 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Who says it isn’t? The geolocation only does the first hop. Of course, in the case of Nigeria, it’s organized crime running this with forced labor and being paid off by international interests to do it. It’s more profitable than nigerian prince scams.

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[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 30 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Instagram is just as bad. Some accounts make provocative comments but never reply. Looking at their profiles as well, they have little to no followers or no post at all. It's like with Reddit in which accounts that are months or years old with no activity, and then suddenly become activated posting hateful single issues.

The intention is to divide the people so that powers-that-be hoodwink us while stealing from our pockets. Many of us know better that the posts are ragebaits. However, social media companies do nothing about bad faith actors because they benefit from angry discourse to inflate engagement and attention for more traffic and advertising. You wonder who are the people are surprised by this? It's mainly those who don't expand from their narrow experience and like digital brain rot contents.

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[–] homura1650@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago

I'm surprised it is getting caught by this feature. I thought routing those accounts through a US based connection was table stakes. But, I guess there is no point bothering until people actually are able to see.

[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 93 points 4 days ago (1 children)

392,000 people were tricked by a person who isn't even smart enough to use a VPN.

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 31 points 4 days ago

Its generous to suggest 1 follower = 1 person

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 33 points 4 days ago

“I hope that everyone sees, regardless of their specific reason, that the enemy is outside of the house. The people posing as Americans with big American opinions but are actually operating from a basement across the world have one common goal - to destroy the United States. We have our issues, but we really can’t allow them to succeed.”

Elon:

"Yeah, we're just gonna turn that feature right back off here for a second...nothing to see, don't worry about it."

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 44 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The Fediverse needs to implement something like this. We already have a problem, and it is important to stop this before it gets worse.

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 9 points 4 days ago (3 children)

It kinda already does. If you have your own instance you can see people's IPs.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That’s not the same as making them publicly visible.

[–] vga@sopuli.xyz 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I'm worried that the actors we most need to be worried about are more than able to hide their origin countries if they need to. I mean even I could do that if I wanted to.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I agree. If they want to expend the resources to manipulate public opinion then hiding their identity is not going to be a problem.

[–] khepri@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago (2 children)

On the internet it has never made sense to take someone's claimed location or identity as fact, it's been that way for 25 or 30 years and I feel like I'm going insane seeing so many people apparently realize this for the first time.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 7 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Some might actually believe me when I say I am a cartoon dog.

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And what about VPNs?

Or what about rotating residential proxies?

If I want to, it's not that hard to fake your location

The biggest point of this is that Twitter was so lazy that these guys didn't even have to try to hide their location, so they didn't and cut cost

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[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

People need to implement proper "firewall rules" in their brain's "OS".

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

It's kinda hard and might be unreasonable to expect people to be alone against an industry that dedicages unprecedented amount of money and power solely to deceive people. You're not immune to propaganda, it's impossible to be, no matter what you tell yourself.

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[–] _stranger_@lemmy.world 43 points 4 days ago
[–] DeICEAmerica@lemmy.world 52 points 4 days ago (7 children)

It's painfully obvious X is a cesspool of Muskbots and Russian seedbots accounts.

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[–] fox2263@lemmy.world 44 points 4 days ago (1 children)

How long until he turns it off?

[–] favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 55 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Pretty sure he already did based on other comments I’ve seen around other sites.

[–] fox2263@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Well shucks.

Hopefully long enough for MAGA to question even a small portion of their existence

[–] MummifiedClient5000@feddit.dk 24 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Sorry, but introspection is woke.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 26 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Remind me of this book I own

This engine is woke

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[–] DougHolland@lemmy.world 32 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Odd that Xitter should be the dump that officially reveals this, as the reveal runs counter to their interests.

They just aren't that smart, only evil and selfish

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[–] Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 days ago

Country of origin is just IP based? Like VPN users are shown as from their VPN server?

[–] Linktank@lemmy.today 11 points 4 days ago

Gullible morons.

[–] H1AA6329S@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Not that surprising knowing how much countries like russia invest in their troll farms and how much influence has been applied on Americans from the outside.

Good feature overall, Facebook has this feature too. I was not surprised that many nsfw shorts creators on the page are actually India or similar locations based. Making much of a sense, since the clicks are now generally being generated by using sora

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

Shame if a Ukrainian drone strike were to take out a few troll farms.

[–] kelpie_returns@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago

It is obvious that many of these accounts are bots or paid actors, but I wonder how much VPN usage has impacted these stats

[–] MapleEngineer@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

Alexis Wilkins, FBI director Kash Patel's girlfriend, also added, ...

Who?

(the fuck cares what some two but MAGA country singer says?)

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 days ago

Extremely disingenuous title. Not surprising, every time I come across the Hindustan Times they are slobbing the knob of fascists.

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 9 points 4 days ago

The MAGA followers are out of non-America. The Anti-MAGA leaders are out of non-America, or using a VPN.

Interesting.

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