Chaos and hilarity on X/Twitter as the location feature shows many users were falsely posing as Americans.

 

Screenshot of a fake Ivanka Trump page.

X, formerly known as Twitter, released a new location feature that exposed many accounts as falsely posing as Americans. BBC. Thousands of accounts were exposed as not being American in the update, which caused a large amount of criticism. The accounts were both pro-and anti-Trump. Many of these accounts were based in India and Nigeria and were verified and monetized by the platform. Motivation for these accounts is varied, some are attempting to exploit America's culture war for money while others may be trying to influence policy. America was not the only country to have fake users, with the BBC finding many pro-independence accounts in Scotland were actually based in Iran. 

My Comment:

A lighter news story for once, this entire situation was endlessly entertaining for me this weekend. So many accounts got exposed for not being what they claimed to be and everyone else was laughing at them while proving that they actually are Americans. 

Most news outlets are trying to make this political but it really isn't. There were impersonators on both sides, fake Republicans and Democrats. And many of these accounts weren't political in any way, they were just scamming people or trying to scam money from the monetization system. And it's not like it was just America that was affected by this, the report mentioned Scotland, but there are other examples too. 

Indeed, it's been a meme for awhile that a lot of these accounts were pretty obviously fake. From what it sounds like the fake pro-Trump accounts were mostly Nigerian, anti-Trump accounts were European or Canadian, "groyper" accounts were European and Indian accounts were faking anything and everything. None of this is new. Indeed, the constant stream of fake Elon Musk accounts was beyond annoying for a long time on X. 

This does raise some questions about the monetization system on X. For the sake of disclosure, I am verified on X but not monetized and it is a goal of mine. But it's a lot harder to do legitimately than simply doing what these accounts are doing, impersonating an American and then using bot farms to boost their accounts. That means folks are getting money for fake content that should be going to actual real accounts, and that sucks. 

What is a concern is the idea these accounts could have been influencing elections or other major issues. The Israel-Gaza conflict is a good example of this. Many pro-Israel accounts were actually Indians, either because they wanted to exploit the issue for monetization, or because they genuinely like Israel. And the anti-Israel people were often Europeans or from Muslim countries. Both of these kinds of accounts may have falsely increased the relevance of the issue. And the same thing could have happened in the 2025 midterm elections as well, on both sides of the ball. 

I should note that I don't have a problem with foreigners commenting on American politics. After all, American politics are fairly global and sometimes those folks bring up good points. Indeed, I follow folks from all of the world. It's the impersonation and exploitation of monetization that is a problem, not to mention the out and out scammers. 

I do think that this was an extremely good idea by Elon Musk and X and it's something that I really wish was universal over all social media. I'm generally opposed to digital ID's and such, but transparency for social media is a little different. I should have a good idea of where posters are posting from, but right now I can only do that on X. It should be universal.