Prominent MAGA X accounts have come under fire this weekend after being exposed to be foreign users from Thailand, Eastern Europe (non-EU), Nigeria and more.
After the social platform launched its new country-of-origin feature on Friday, such foreign influence has also been found on pro-Russian, pro-Iranian, pro-Palestine and pro-Israel accounts, among others.
The new X feature has sparked mixed responses. “This is easily one of the greatest days on this platform,” wrote liberal influencer Henry Sisson. “Seeing all of these MAGA accounts get exposed as foreign actors trying to destroy the United States is a complete vindication of Democrats, like myself and many on here, who have been warning about this.”
After someone on the platform asked Grok if “this happened on both sides,” the generative chatbot answered, “The discrepancy was announced via Grok on X. “Recent X updates with country labels have highlighted several pro-Trump/MAGA accounts as foreign-based, often Russian. Searches show fewer reports of Democrat accounts exposed in this specific event, though foreign influence ops have targeted both political sides historically, per sources like DOJ and CNN.”
Sisson also shared a lengthy list of accounts that appear to be operated from countries that differ from the content they post. While some, such as the popular right-wing RedPilledNurse account, claim to have never hidden their country of origin, others appear more dubious.
Sisson linked to several accounts that push pro-MAGA content, including one that offers Tom Homan news updates and is based in Eastern Europe and a MAGA news account based in Morocco.
The RedPilledNurse defended herself on the platform and noted in part, “Since the first day I created my profile, Belgium was always mentioned in my bio.”
X has been plagued with bot accounts since its inception, but the trouble with fake accounts ramped up significantly after Elon Musk took over in October 2022. Though Musk promised to rid the platform of bots and other problematic accounts, in 2024 the anti-disinformation tech company Cyabara found at least 20% of the accounts interacting with X’s owner following the presidential election were bots.
Musk nearly called off the $44 billion deal over concerns about bots on the platform. “If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms,” Musk wrote in August 2022. “However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”
At the time, Twitter claimed bots made up roughly 5% of the accounts on the service.
