[Maru]

I'm surprised nobody has made a thread on this.

Full List of MAGA Accounts on X Exposed As Being Based Outside US
https://www.newsweek.com/maga-accoun...posed-11097693

X's new location transparency feature unleashes questions about origins of MAGA accounts
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...nts-rcna245487

Of course, they're all jumping all over the MAGA ones. lol They've been exposed across the board. Pretty much any political thing has bots now. Though I think it's fair that a lot of these are targeting the ire/engagement of MAGA focused users as the "American Twitter" does seem to lean more rightwing now... but what's troubling are the amount of "prominent" accounts that trend very often and were once considered big voices have been exposed to have been from foreign users.

There's a lot of screenshots of all kinds of accounts (including GAZA-related accounts) being from out of country, but it's not possible to verify them all because they took down the feature.

Homeland Security/DHS had to explain a screenshot was forged that showed it being based on Israel and downloaded from Israel android shop lol. And there are people who are showing videos where it was definitely there at some point, but then that's easily forged also.

I'm glad for transparency, but there's so much wrong with this also because since they pulled the feature, nobody can actually verify what was on which page at any time. So now there's tons of screenshots and no way to know "Oh this person is a fraud".

Also, there's accuracy issues with showing accuracy IP geo-locations. Then there's also some people who use VPN. Supposedly, the location is cached for a little bit as some people were they were out of country about a week before in the locations showing. But also they did confirm they let those location updates lag a bit to protect privacy. So the location stamps are not "real time". So if there was a service department official who had gone out of country for a job (very realistic and vry common for federal employees) and say they post there with a dedicated phone given to them while in that country (very possible), then yeah I can see where that can create all sorts of conclusions.. so I think rightfully, they blocked people from seeing the location tags of govt accounts.

Edit: BTW, I'm not surprised by any of this... I've long felt social media platforms and comment sections have been fully hijacked. It's a too big of a difference from how it once was. Plus the exact same angry voices all the time...

[Oliver_W]

Are people like MAGA-types and Hamas Huggers etc more or less likely to use a VPN than those ambivalent on "big important issues" ?

I'm not sure I'd immediately trust any of the exposed locations.

[bots]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

Are people like MAGA-types and Hamas Huggers etc more or less likely to use a VPN than those ambivalent on "big important issues" ?

I'm not sure I'd immediately trust any of the exposed locations.

you can tell if a user is locating with vpn

[Maru]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

Are people like MAGA-types and Hamas Huggers etc more or less likely to use a VPN than those ambivalent on "big important issues" ?

I'm not sure I'd immediately trust any of the exposed locations.

There's a different icon for VPN users (or was...). Supposedly they can tell that with relative accuracy. I use a VPN for streaming video and a lot of prominent sites in the US (even shops) won't even let me on their site (403 Forbidden) or they throw more Captchas at me more regularly, so they have a good idea of who are using those services, I think...

[Maru]

FWIW, I don't trust the accuracy of all the locations, but I think if they had left it open, it would be much easier to just monitor "oh this person moved here"... that said, when I use VPN servers for the UK, sometimes they come up as Netherlands and I'll be blocked from things on ITVX. So I'll just click another server that will geolocate more correctly and refresh and it loads lol.

Edit: The other touch which helped is that they also included which application they were using.. so if they downloaded from a different market in the Android shop, it would show it was a different country also. I don't know if "market enablers" still exist where we can change geolocations to show the other market shops out of country, but it used to be possible... I still have some Japan-based applications in mine because they're added in my library from when I used to use market enablers to get SNS apps.

[arista]

[I'm surprised nobody has made a thread on this.]

So much news today
I did not get time.

Glad you made this thread, though



[Of course, they're all jumping all over the MAGA ones. lol
They've been exposed across the board.
Pretty much any political thing has bots now.
Though I think it's fair that a lot of these
are targeting the ire/engagement of MAGA focused users
as the "American Twitter" does seem to lean more rightwing now...]


Yes, lucky no one was killed.