X Just Accidentally Exposed a Covert Influence Network Targeting Americans

https://weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/x-just-accidentally-exposed-a-vast

by adriand • 8 months ago

322 186 8 months ago

weaponizedspaces.substack.com

jrm42• 8 months ago

Absolutely wild that this isn't bigger news. This should be the front page of every major news network.

chneu• 8 months ago

Most of this, to some degree, has been well established for a while.

American Republicans have relied heavily on foreign interference to achieve their goals. From social media manipulation to laundering illegal political bribes, Republicans have been doing it.

jrm42• 8 months ago

100%, but the clear proof afforded by Elon should be the opportunity to really put it out there.

phantasmish2• 8 months ago

It’s widely known and reported this is happening. I guess this might get the message to people in the back who aren’t paying attention… but given we’ve had most of a decade of off-and-on coverage of this, anyone left is probably unreachable, and a bunch of them have been primed to ignore this exact sort of headline as “fake news”.

morkalork• 8 months ago

There was that whole Russian operation paying blogs, influencers and other alt-media personalities in the run up to the election that was investigated. Nothing came of it and no one cared. I lost all faith in anyone being reasonable at that point. People want to hear what they want to hear, you can tell about how it's a psyops all you want, they still don't care.

dstroot• 8 months ago

They (major news networks) are owned by Trump friendlies (Bezos/WaPo, Soon-Shiong/LAT, etc.) or they are afraid of Trump’s influence.

mschuster912• 8 months ago

Don't know why you're being downvoted. Ever since Trump first silenced critics by abusing the authority of his office (or threatening to do so), it is painfully obvious how many large media houses shy away from all-too-blatant reporting.

inglor_cz4• 8 months ago

If MAGA does not care, Trump won't care either, and I cannot imagine MAGA caring.

yetihehe2• 8 months ago

No one likes to be the bad messenger saying to Americans that they were fooled and all that hatred against their opponents (opposite party) was actually induced, not born out of their own superiority.

numpad0• 8 months ago

Musk's like a transparent kid these days. Anything he touches seem to disappear from media - there is such thing as bad publicity after all, I guess.

postflopclarity2• 8 months ago

I mean it's been pretty obvious for a while...

the people who would care already knew about this. the people who didn't know about this don't care (or are in denial).

an0malous3• 8 months ago

It’s going to get flagged off of HN front page within the hour like it did the last two times someone posted about it

ALittleSlow2• 8 months ago

Tall tale signs of a foreign influence campaign cover up, watch your 6

yetihehe2• 8 months ago

It already disappeared from front page. Your comment was 45 minutes old when I was writing this.

jorisboris• 8 months ago

Why, does it breach any rules?

lesuorac4• 8 months ago

Why?

Govs doing influence campaigns was admitted during the twitter files [1]. While it's the US-relationship, Twitter is a global company so they're going to have other country relationships.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files#Nos._8%E2%80%939...

simonw• 8 months ago

I doubt most of this is foreign government influence campaigns. I think it's more that Twitter will pay you to post clickbait, and if you are in Africa or many parts of Asia the amount you can earn is significant.

There was some great reporting about Macedonian teenagers doing this kind of thing back in 2016 - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fake-news-how-partying-ma... - it was actually the origin of the term "fake news" before Trump redefined it to mean any mainstream media coverage that he didn't like.

epistasis• 8 months ago

First, the government wasn't doing influence campaigns, and the "Twitter Files" had all been reported before, it was just a PR campaign for Musk to try to lessen trust among the populace.

Second, this is about foreign influence driving a lot of the self-destructive politics in the US. Right now the US is going through economic and political destruction a lot like Brexit, and it should be no surprise that it's being lead by those outside of the US who want to make the US weaker.

tstrimple2• 8 months ago

The Twitter Files has to be one of the most direct tells for idiocy that humans have invented. It's almost on the same level as the Mueller Report for right wing clowns with zero understanding of the world pointing to it as if it's some sort of proof. Meanwhile, anyone with any literacy can actually read the reports and find they state the opposite of what conservatives often claim. Unfortunately illiteracy rates are at incredible highs right now and it shows everywhere, including hackernews.

croon• 8 months ago

I find it curious that the "Twitter Files" were never actually made available anywhere. Anyhow, I checked your link, and the source for your statement, is simply an article containing another statement, namely this:

“The same day CENTCOM sent the list, Twitter officials used a tool to grant a special “whitelist” tag that essentially provides verification status to the accounts w/o the blue check, meaning they are exempt from spam/abuse flags, more visible/likely to trend on hashtags,” Fang said.

I'd be interested in reading the "Twitter Files" corroborating this. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I am definitely saying the files would be incredibly easy to defend were they simply released for public consumption and not slowly filtered out over time in short tweets by a few reporters selected by Elon Musk.

Is this an unfair take?

JumpCrisscross• 8 months ago

wild that this isn't bigger news

Give it time.

So far, we only know that X’s “About This Account” feature says a number of accounts, “the most noticeable and largest group” being “those reporting to be Trump fans,” are from suspicious locations.

We don’t know if X fucked up. We don’t know what fraction are via VPN. We don’t know if this Substack author is considering a biased sample. It may be individual profiteers. It could be one, or multiple, coördinated campaigns. X may be complicit or clueless.

I’d be surprised if serious journalists aren’t tasked on this. But it’s going to need to be one of the papers with investigative resources, i.e. ones with paying subscribers, and I’m not seeing anything here that screams this should be a top priority right now versus any time between now and the midterms, nor that it will be remotely easy doing the needed verifications.

(That said, the premise is incorrect. In limited cases, it’s gaining traction [1].)

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/11/x-about-this-...

Fricken• 8 months ago

We've known of foreign influence campaigns targeting Americans on social media for a long time. A significant number of HN users have a vested interest in pretending it isn't the case. Some of them are making money off it. Others are too proud to entertain the notion that they might be the gullible victims of rage-bait and disinformation. Posts on the subject usually gets flagged pretty quick, but it's getting harder to ignore the truth.

NuclearPM• 8 months ago

Hard to compete with leaders being accused of raping, corruption, and and calling for execution of political opponents for newsworthiness.

rtkwe4• 8 months ago

It's been known for a while this is just verification. Accounts give themselves away all the time accidentally through phrases or tells. eg: A tweet from an account claiming to be from the US talking about Texas succession that mentions 'warm water ports', very few people care or think about that because all the ports on the continental US don't freeze over in the winter. (In fact very few countries do because most have as many warm water ports as they need, one of the few with significant issues with this is... Russia)

quickthrowman• 8 months ago

The easiest one to spot is a lack of articles. A distinct lack of ‘the’ and ‘a’ in a sample of written English means the writer’s native language lacks articles. Like Finnish, or… Russian.

overrun113• 8 months ago

That people from third world countries are making slop political accounts to make money? Hardly a news story at all

specialist• 8 months ago

No surprise to us geeks, of course. "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" and all that.

The big surprise (disappointment) to me was witnessing how "do your own research" looks in practice.

  - Type in some search terms.
  - Open handful of the top hits.
  - Believe everything. 
  - Even the obvious scams & ads.

There's something about media that bypasses most adult's innate skepticism. Like if I told some stranger (IRL) that saffron cures baldness, they'd be all GTFO. But hear it from a talk show host or read it on Facebook, well shit, it must be true.

hn1986• 8 months ago

this isn't surprising. as the article mentions, this has been going on since at least 2016. You can expect influence campaigns to be on every social network and comment section.

The problem is that these companies do nothing about this.

tstrimple2• 8 months ago

It was widely reported that right wing influencers were being directly paid by Russia for their disinformation. People like Tim Poole were demonstrated to be on the Russian payroll but nothing ever came from it because conservatives don't care. They have no real values or beliefs other than winning and making people they don't like suffer. The "moderates" are too busy trying to decide what the right compromise between fascism and freedom are. The liberals are too busy trying to find their next way to punch left while platforming fascists as allies.

cranberryturkey• 8 months ago

That’s crazy

Natsu• 8 months ago

It's not really "accidental. Exposing stuff like this is precisely why they rolled out the country of origin feature.

andrenotgiant• 8 months ago

But that would be a narrative violation. X.com and Elon Musk can't possibly be portrayed doing anything positive or productive.

kardianos• 8 months ago

It isn't bigger news because it would expose many of the targets they like to throw things at (eg Groypers) are not American, but foreign agents masquerading as such.

macintux• 8 months ago

Effectively a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46028422, so while I agree this is important news that should be widely covered, we don't need another thread.

consumer4519• 8 months ago

They should be merged in that case.

throw_m2393392• 8 months ago

This isn't by accident. It's funny however how both sides are ignoring the foreign networks aimed at their own camp.

tetris11• 8 months ago

Both sides? This is news to me. Where can I read more

add-sub-mul-div• 8 months ago

Is there anyone left who's falling for the idea of symmetry of scope on what's going on? It reads like the most transparent attempt at diversion and denial.

radiorental2• 8 months ago

Right, and the outcome changes little that wasn't already known.

The interesting part of this story is why was this switched on now, by whom? Why was it briefly turned off? Was that an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle?

unshavedyak• 8 months ago

Briefly turned off? Oh it's back on? That's good at least. I thought he permanently turned it off the moment it didn't align with his goals.

postflopclarity2• 8 months ago

... "both sides" ? seems pretty heavily one sided to me.

leosanchez• 8 months ago

Not just America, I assume this is pretty common for most countries' political discourse on Twitter.

Reddit also needs to have a feature like this.

consumer4519• 8 months ago

Here is one example: https://old.reddit.com/r/poland/comments/1p5cqcs/literally_e...

NietTim• 8 months ago

Seeing how reddit is moving in the opposite direction by doing things like allowing people to hide their submission histories, that seems highly unlikely.

unethical_ban3• 8 months ago

If it becomes more common for a service to reveal the geography of a user, wouldn't these cyberwarfare farms stand up VPN servers?

This is certainly useful as a one-time reveal since the attackers didn't think this data would leak, but now can't they prepare better?

PaulKeeble• 8 months ago

VPN farms and using remote servers are all with a bit of effort detectable. It starts a new arms race but all it takes is to catch the account misplaced once on a change to then keep that history and expose the discrepancy forever. Its going to be quite difficult to get and maintain a genuine domestic IP that is unique per account and doesn't then get shut down often.

_--__--__• 8 months ago

Easy, you just ban all known vpn endpoints and cloud hosting provider IP ranges. 4chan figured all this out over a decade ago.

nodesocket• 8 months ago

As the article mentions a lot of the accounts probably just using VPN services. Remember when Elon exposed the US government in cahoots with Meta and Twitter actively shadow banning people for free speech on legitimate topics such as covid, covid vaccines, masks, and the woke agenda?

RoyTyrell• 8 months ago

The "Twitter Files" absolutely did not expose anything like that, despite what Lord Genius Elon tried to imply. At best it exposed internal discussion and policies that may have suppressed posts related to Covid, but showed that the Biden administration was largely (largely doesn't mean never) uninvolved with that. It seems like the most they asked was in regards to the "Hunter Biden Laptop" issue and that was largely with posts that were showing the nudes of the women that he was sleeping with, not even posts that were just nude Hunter.

Elon then turned on Matt Taibbi and banned him from Twitter when he wouldn't go along with his lying and spin.

devin• 8 months ago

You mean when he teamed up with hack journalist Matt Taibi to try and make a mountain out of a molehill?

jagged-chisel• 8 months ago

“Moving forward, we’ll likely see a re-examination of how much credence we give to social media as a barometer of public opinion.”

Who is “we?” Not the media in the US, I’d wager.

hbarka• 8 months ago

How does Elon Musk reconcile this with his own behavior on X, personally boosting fringe people and groups?

mikeyouse2• 8 months ago

Remember when Musk’s entire cause celebre was to expose the bot networks and paid trolls on Twitter and then he dropped all of that bluster when he realized how useful they’d be to his political goals?

phantasmish2• 8 months ago

They’re probably also such a large part of the active Twitter “user base” that substantially reigning them in would be enough to put the product into a permanent, sharp decline.

neuralkoi• 8 months ago

This also was an individual who was getting very little sleep, taking an unknown assortment of hallucinogenic psychotropics, who clearly got drunk off his own success and the attention he got, possibly psyop'd by multiple governments due to his reach and influence.

It's kind of tragic. He reminds me of Smeagol from Lord of the Rings. People lacking any virtue (like wisdom, compassion, or courage) are extremely vulnerable to external dark forces.

jpadkins• 8 months ago

Then why is he allowing it to be exposed right now? If actually useful to his political goals, he would suppress the launch of the location feature, right?

throw_m2393392• 8 months ago

How does Elon Musk reconcile this with his own behavior on X, personally boosting fringe people and groups?

Musk has his own agenda.

psunavy03• 8 months ago

While I don't agree with him doing that, he's doing it above board and in his own name. That's different from foreign actors doing it incognito under covered identities.

Elon is a nut, but he's open about being a nut.

rtkwe4• 8 months ago

That would require introspection, something he's far too busy for.

Myzel394• 8 months ago

Am I the only one who feels like the article is at least partially written by AI?

haritha-j• 8 months ago

yes

mlmonkey2• 8 months ago

Unfortunately, it requires 3 clicks ("account" -> "join date" -> "about account") to get the required information.

It should be visible on the post itself: where it was posted from, and where the author's account is mostly located. Just 2 little chips stuck on top of each and every post.

space_ghost• 8 months ago

Followed immediately by these groups making VPNs a standard part of their toolkit. This data is enlightening but its reveal doesn't solve the problem.

luxuryballs• 8 months ago

yeah it needs to be robust enough to keep a trail so it can detect leaks and predict, and perhaps eventually identify vpn nodes, like Reddit will often block my request when I’m on VPN so there may be a way to smartly disregard certain requests from being counted as the true location, this seems really complicated the more I think about it though

ericmay2• 8 months ago

Twitter can require verification on their end or require ID upload or something along those lines. The social media companies can solve this problem, it’s just way too profitable to not. They make a lot of money when you read about non-existent events from an account curated in China or India or Belarus and then go look at a bunch of ads for Patriot Bars (R) or Rainbow socks (L) or whatever.

They could by default for example require an identification of some sort, and then allow “non-ID” accounts to exist but require specific opt-in to view broadly or something along those lines.

More easily though you can just delete your account and then you don’t have to care about any of this crap.

bequanna• 8 months ago

It seems like they are using a more sophisticated way to determine location (App Store download county, etc) not just IP.

_lvbh• 8 months ago

Twitter reveals when it thinks users are using a VPN and tries to guess the origin location regardless, though with quite low accuracy

hbosch• 8 months ago

It wouldn't be difficult to include a little "" icon on each post that, when hovered, shows probable location or the creation origin. It's true that VPN's will often muddy this info, and even things like phone number confirmation for 2FA or billing address for Verified badges can't be 100% reliable... but it shouldn't be too difficult to say in those cases "User likely masking location" if the pattern is detected.

ecommerceguy2• 8 months ago

Yes, X is the new /pol.

How many of these accounts are Russian? I bet hardly any. My money is mostly from a small country in the middle east.

Fnoord4• 8 months ago

The largest effect is that X suddenly (out of nowhere?) started to mention this, publicly. Which, given mr. Musk's political stance (who himself has been the target of a campaign, likely from mr. Putin), wasn't intended to have this effect.

If you were to share this information publicly from the start, the troll/propagandist/agent would know this information is being shared as-is from the start, and they could adapt. Very likely they would adapt. Therefore, the effect would be much less severe.

It is also very obviously PII, which would hurt innocent people (likely a minority but I can imagine it happening).

My take: intelligence agencies were already interested in said information and mr. Musk was like "whatever, we'll just share this with everyone".

xphos• 8 months ago

It's not about being easy it is about being profitable. I don't care where you fall politically, accounts like this increase engagement and thus profit. Companies like profit so this type of thing despite being much easier than some might assert is going to be slow to do. You can have legal requirements around identification for accounts over 2K followers. It basically would never inconvience people unless they are trying to be an influencer

kg• 8 months ago

In the old days 'where it was posted from' used to be displayed on tweets, and Elon intentionally changed it to 'Earth'. Interesting to see a backpedal here, albeit concealed.

jsheard3• 8 months ago

Didn't that show the client the user posted from, not their location? Which was mostly useless anyway after they all but killed the API.

ancorevard2• 8 months ago

This is incorrect.

The old Twitter and its API had "source" field which showed the client app a tweet was sent from.

{ "created_at": "Mon Nov 20 12:34:56 +0000 2023", "id_str": "1726578932412345678", "full_text": "Example tweet", "source": "<a href=\"http://twitter.com/download/iphone\" rel=\"nofollow\">Twitter for iPhone</a>", ... }

chuckreynolds• 8 months ago

they really should. i thought they'd have a flag on the actual profile.

insin2• 8 months ago

I'm thinking of adding it next to the Tweet source when you focus a Tweet:

https://twitter.com/ControlPanelFT/status/199301008332080747...

shanev• 8 months ago

I built a little Chrome extension that shows the flag for where the account is based in on the profile page itself: https://grokify.app.

bargainbin• 8 months ago

Wild reading the news earlier to see Iran is making a concerted effort to influence Scottish Independence.

Is the idea to weaken the UK? To what end?

Also, if it’s being done to us, surely we’re doing it back? The CIA and MI6 are no stranger to destabilising regimes, and yet surely it would be more common knowledge if we were employing people to post anti-Putin propaganda on Russian forums?

consumer4519• 8 months ago

Iran is very much an ally of Russia. The theory I have seen for Moscow wanting Scottish independence is that they might remove the UK's only nuclear sub port from their newly independent country.

Also, it would be a general black eye for the UK, which has been very supportive of the defense of Ukraine.

rz2k• 8 months ago

That sounds like the blundering VP/president in The Diplomat. I wonder if it's instead North Sea Oil, and Iran preferring a UK with less energy independence.

phpnode• 8 months ago

Is the idea to weaken the UK? To what end?

Yes, of course, the same with Brexit. It is is in Iran and Russia's interests for their enemies to be divided and distracted by internal conflict.

mamonster• 8 months ago

Also, if it’s being done to us, surely we’re doing it back?

Until USAID got gutted, yes. Now not sure.

im3w1l• 8 months ago

Probably but it's also more complicated than such a simplistic analysis. I think they want to jam the communications in general. Make big problems seem small. Make small problems seem big. Make people suspect legitimate debaters of being trolls.

blibble2• 8 months ago

scottish independence occurring likely ends the UK nuclear deterrent (or makes it much harder practically)

a couple hundred thousand dollars to potentially eliminate the UK as a nuclear power? seems like a no brainer if you're iran/russia

machomaster• 8 months ago

"Also, if it’s being done to us, surely we’re doing it back?"

You have it backwards. Americans were the first to do that, Russia and other were clearly lagging behind and acting in response.

teddyX• 8 months ago

And DOGE was cancelled the day after. Coincidence I’m sure

MomsAVoxell3• 8 months ago

Until we see the source code for how X is determining the geo-location, all bets are off.

This could just as easily be X, trying to influence opinions on the nature of America's divisive classes, which is to say there is just as much evidence that is the case as any other circumstances one might conclude.

jajuuka• 8 months ago

Exactly. Using Twitter as a primary source for this is dubious. Already seen a few accounts prove that they are where they say they are even though X shows them as being half way across the world.

Following occams razor, I think they released a broken feature and have taken it down since then to fix it. Which leads all these "revelations" to be based on incomplete or false data. Not to say the site isn't filled with bots and influence campaigns, it absolutely is. But basing that conclusion on this location information is foolish.

MomsAVoxell3• 8 months ago

Meanwhile the collective is fully prepared to just roll right along with this conspiracy theory like its reality.

welcome_dragon• 8 months ago

Make sure that tin foil hat is secure there

MomsAVoxell3• 8 months ago

Yeah bro, war is peace.

mschuster912• 8 months ago

It's not just Americans that are being targeted. If you look at prominent far-right pseudo-influencers (i.e. identities not tied to a real living person) in Germany, the result is just the same. Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa - not Germany.

Or it's everyone being targeted by scammers posing as Gazans - these scammers are, for me, the vilest of the vile. No matter which team one is on regarding this particular conflict... abusing the dire situation in which many Gazans legitimately are to grift money is outright wrong.

We need to hold Russia and China, the most likely actors pulling the strings, accountable. No more niceties, no more playing with the big guys, until this kind of warfare stops. And so we should treat every country hosting the low-level agents. Clean shop or get hammered. I'm sick and tired of cyber crime, propaganda warfare and scamming our elderly. Enough is enough.

josefrichter2• 8 months ago

So... Is Musk really trying to say he didn't know this before election? This has to be investigated, as it has implications far beyond Musk. This is basically a global scandal.

overrun113• 8 months ago

No slop accounts being run from third world countries is not a global scandal

josefrichter2• 8 months ago

The scandal is he most likely knew the election is being manipulated via his platform, but didn’t say anything, because it was in “his” candidate’s favor.

jsheard3• 8 months ago

I wouldn't be surprised if some of these accounts are psyops, but the majority are probably just grifters exploiting X's revenue sharing system. We've already seen that play out on Facebook where users in developing countries would spam low-effort, high-engagement content to make money. That might mean posting political rage-bait or producing AI-generated Shrimp Jesus pictures (amen), it's just down to whatever gets the clicks this week.

superxpro12• 8 months ago

In any case, it's manufacturing immoral and violent sentiment to the detriment of society. Why should we allow such things to percolate? What benefit is this providing to society?

jsheard3• 8 months ago

There's no benefit to society, but revshare abuse differs in that it's self-inflicted by the platforms. They can make it go away by not rewarding that behaviour.

parineum3• 8 months ago

Because you're not the morality police and speech isn't violence.

incomingpain• 8 months ago

Every other ad on the internet is for vpn services. Some work better than others.

From my pov, what a great change.

Anyone talking without specific location, it doesnt matter.

Anyone talking positively about something, it doesn't matter.

We now know more about those interacting in a negative way.

ZeroGravitas• 8 months ago

The "scary foreign" parts of this seems to miss the forest for the trees.

Social media makes rage-baiting people into a lucrative career and opens it up to anyone with an internet connection.

an0malous3• 8 months ago

No it’s definitely more important that foreign countries are manipulating American politics through social media than people in poor countries are making money off of rage bait (and likely many of the latter are being paid by the former).

ALittleSlow2• 8 months ago

To be or not to be, xenophobic and America first? Perhaps we should blame this on Big VPN? Or is this more 20-minute city geo-fencing technology pushing? All sorts of fun ways to spin this one.

SPICLK23• 8 months ago

Further evidence that a national firewall is a prudent idea. What kind of careless government would permit anyone in the world to have unfettered, anonymous access to their citizens' thoughts and minds?

karakot• 8 months ago

Agreed comrade, only goverment sanctioned communication should be allowed.

SPICLK23• 8 months ago

The government already sanctions other communications, along with every other aspect of your life. Why does the internet get a pass?

unethical_ban3• 8 months ago

Green account with a low-effort sarcastic comment. Worthy not only of downvotes, but public derision.

Do you have any desire, or idea, on how to curb cyber-agitprop from enemy nations? Is living in a world with rampant, effective, agitprop on the internet with zero reaction the least of all evils?

braincat314152• 8 months ago

It's a fair question. No, no desire to curb anything because of who is going to do the curbing. Any regulating entity (government or private) will use subjective judgement and will invariably devolve into censorship. The concern of course is that humans as a crowd are dumb, but on the other hand I think you give individuals too little credit. A smart person won't get his/her political views from random X posts.

The problem is that most americans do not know first hand how the real censorship looks like. In the context of the previous discussion in that thread, chinese and russian firewalls block any discussion of gay rights issues. Do you think the US will be any different? We are all humans with the same deficiencies. Any "firewall", however it is implemented, will be a double edged sword that will eventually start cutting one way, and you won't like the result.

To sum it up, yes, it's the least of all evils.

If you would like to deride the answer, I assure you I am quite immune to the effort.

SPICLK23• 8 months ago

Do you have any desire, or idea, on how to curb cyber-agitprop from enemy nations

Ban anonymous comments.

Is living in a world with rampant, effective, agitprop on the internet with zero reaction the least of all evils?

Given the impact on political discourse and outcomes, I would say most definitely not.

fsckboy• 8 months ago

likely the most sweeping public exposure of covert foreign activity on a major platform since the revelations about Russia in 2016

the 2016 "revelations" were a nothing-burger, ginned up as cover for the actual dangerous conspiracy, to spy on a rival political campaign in a scandal that eclipses Watergate.

daveguy• 8 months ago

Wow, they really got you, didn't they. Good luck leaving if you ever try.

hulud• 8 months ago

4chan’s /pol/ has had the flag forever, and “show flag” is a typical callout.

Only the normies are surprised and the pearl clutching on HN is farcical. You should know better by now.

I guess the outrage must be manufactured so let’s all join hands and pretend we are shocked by this news and demand something be done, I guess. Slow news week.

ChrisArchitect• 8 months ago

X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46028422

X begins rolling out 'About this account' location feature to users' profiles

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46024417

Top MAGA Influencers on X/Twitter Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46024211

vcryan• 8 months ago

It definitely could be foreign influence. It also could be US companies/campaigns (same thing...) outsourcing their astroturfing to other countries to save money.

AJRF• 8 months ago

The attempts at controlling the narrative feel a lot more unsubtle since Musk took over.

I bet dollars to donuts that they are tipping the scale on stoking up tensions on UK users with things like migration and class division.

I only follow tech people on twitter, but if you looked at my FYP you'd think I was deeply interested in UK politics - which I am not!

Havoc• 8 months ago

Yup. Not just x though. On insta Even a slight misstep and you’re up to your eyeballs in anti migrant content from the algo

lavezzi• 8 months ago

https://twitter.com/settings/your_twitter_data/twitter_inter...

think you'll be surprised in what has been signed for on your behalf.

annexrichmond2• 8 months ago

This is mostly why I stopped going on Reddit. At least on X I have more control over what I see and mostly just follow trustworthy accounts. I just assume most of the commentary on mainstream American subreddits like politics is infiltrated by foreign actors and bots.

MengerSponge2• 8 months ago

LMAO.

You've got a chance if you use Mastodon or Bluesky, but you don't have control of the X algorithm.

annexrichmond2• 8 months ago

you don't have control of the X algorithm

There is literally a timeline that only shows the feed of people you follow.

y-c-o-m-b• 8 months ago

I left because I couldn't stand the echo-chamber and hivemind attitudes. There's also way too many people arguing just for the sake of arguing, even though they agree with your overall comments. It was slightly more manageable when you just stuck to very niche sub-reddits like gardening, landscaping, cozyplaces, sub for tv-shows etc. Now it's nothing but bots and AI garbage. The platform is beyond saving.

OutOfHere• 8 months ago

When will Hacker News target the covert non-American influencers pretending to be Americans and holding strong positions on American issues?

baiac• 8 months ago

Why is the word “accidentally” used when this is a feature that was implemented with this particular reason in mind?

mpalmer• 8 months ago

Because it gets clicks.

herpdyderp• 8 months ago

Given Musk's political affiliations, it seems unlikely that this was the intended outcome.

dexwiz• 8 months ago

Musk's affiliation is power and whomever will give him more money. This is a tactic he has revealed. Don't go along with him? He will expose your propaganda network. Or maybe he will enable a way to change it for money. Musk isn't loyal to anyone but himself.

blibble2• 8 months ago

the social media companies have likely had this data for a decade and decided to sit on it, as our democracies implode

I guess the CTR for disinformation bot ads must be good?

Uhhrrr• 8 months ago

Do we actually know that this is only targeting Americans? If I were a state actor who put this thing together, I would use it on everybody.

with one exception; someone in the US might not think about doing it in other countries

ChocolateGod• 8 months ago

A bunch of the accounts are targeting British politics, but it would seem the Americans are more greatly affected.

helle253• 8 months ago

To be honest, I'm not sure it is a 'covert influence network'.. Or at least, that is a much more conspiratorial turn of phrase than I would use here.

It strikes me as wage arbitrage if anything, an opportunity for these engagement farmers to make very good money (relatively), an opportunity which was all-but-explicitly created by Elon Musk's payout system.

All else aside, its very funny that this is an example of a market-maker once again (un)intentionally destabilizing the social fabric they talk so much about.

parineum3• 8 months ago

an opportunity which was all-but-explicitly created by Elon Musk's payout system.

Nobody seems to remember it now because the narrative got shifted to "Russians manipulating the election" but, in 2015/16, the whole "Fake News" phenomenon was originally attributed to click bait websites being thrown up to get Facebook/AdWords revenue. I believe it was a European outlet interviewing an Indian person, IIRC. (Found it, or one of them, this isn't the one I remember and it's from after the election) [1].

Once the narrative turned to it being Russian bots influencing the election (to further the "Trump as a Russian agent" narrative, speaking of fake news...), that reporting seemed to dry up.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/50...

baklavaEmperor2• 8 months ago

If people are concerned about foreign interference, it’s worth noting that Twitter’s ID-verification pipeline runs through AU10TIX. The company is founded in Tel aviv by an ex Israeli military person and maintains core operations and engineering in Israel, which is where part of the verification flow is processed. That creates a direct data-flow path for sensitive government IDs outside the U.S. for no real reason, and most users have no idea this is happening. I do not want a foreign government to have access to the address of all American verified users on Twitter.

Fnoord4• 8 months ago

You'll need to be more specific. Every adult in Israel is ex-military since they have a mandatory draft. The exception is draft dodgers. FWIW, notably orthodox Jews are among those.

baklavaEmperor2• 8 months ago

Mandatory service isn’t the point. The issue is that a foreign jurisdiction with a tight intelligence industry overlap is processing U.S. government IDs. especially for something like X/Twitter where verified accounts include journalists, activists, and government officials. There are many alternatives located in the US.

array_key_first• 8 months ago

aaaand this is why you should be extremely wary if a company is asking you to upload sensitive information. Even if it's a big company.

I tried to tour an apartment complex, and they required me to use an online application for 'id verification. For a tour. A tour!

I'm sorry, but you do not require my social security number and pictures of my driver's license for me to use my eyeballs to see an apartment unit. What am I gonna do? Drive away with the apartment?

iamleppert• 8 months ago

At this point, does it not make sense that Israel just become an additional US State or Territory? At least that way they can be taxed, regulated and controlled like any other US territory. If we are committed to providing absolute protection for them like we would a state, they should just become part of the US. Their existing government structures should be absorbed into the US and all their citizens be made US citizens and subject to tax and rule of the law of the US.

overrun113• 8 months ago

Twitter pays more for US impressions so slop accounts often target a US audience and the payments are relatively more attractive to people in less developed countries. Aside from the fact that Americans are only 4% of the world population. What about this is surprising?

There is no evidence presented that there is any state sponsored conspiracy going on. Nor would you need one to explain what we're seeing.

The author also presents no evidence that Pro-Trump accounts are disproportionately represented among accounts lying about their country of residence.

Ultimately, this is just evidence-free gesturing at some grand conspiracy. Cherrypicking the bits that are red meat to her (and apparently HN's) audience.

diggyhole• 8 months ago

I'd pay $100 dollars a year to block all social media posts from India, Pakistan and Malaysia.

cosmicgadget2• 8 months ago

Add Texas and I will make it an even 500.

brador• 8 months ago

There’s just so much money in tard wrangling.

Capitalism is responsible for much of this without the need for organisational control.

silexia• 8 months ago

Reddit, HN, and Facebook all desperately need this information too.

theshrike79• 8 months ago

This is directly from the Russian Война нового поколения (New Generation Warfare)[0] playbook.

new-generation wars are to be dominated by information and psychological warfare, ... morally and psychologically depressing the enemy’s armed forces personnel and civil population

Any kind of discord is good for Russia, every single panic and outrage that splits the population is good, even better when you get people to doubt "the media" in general.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_generation_warfare

trueismywork• 8 months ago

Why should I trust X to give correct based countries for accounts?

parineum3• 8 months ago

The people that work there have shown a willingness to leak information in the past.

pfannkuchen• 8 months ago

So obviously this is big if true, but do we know it isn’t just that a lot of high profile type people on social media use VPNs? If I was a public figure or attempting to be one or anything like that I would definitely try to hide where I am actually located, regardless of whether I am doing anything nefarious, just because political harassment and violence is a thing.

AraceliHarker• 8 months ago

I believe these MAGA accounts were being operated not for a political agenda, but simply as a means for people in developing countries to make money. MAGA content is genuinely easy to spread across social media platforms like X and YouTube, which is why it's so easy to rack up views.

Incipient• 8 months ago

This will fundamentally change nothing. The vast majority of people that care, already know. The others don't care.

Also anyone that is taking any meaningful information from Twitter likely isn't really fussed about the details - they're after whoever is there is support their view.

BergAndCo• 8 months ago

"ACCIDENTALLY" AHAHAHHAHAHAHHA AH AHAHHA HHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA OMFG LOL

1vuio0pswjnm7• 8 months ago

From 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/18/business/china-internet-c...

X Just Accidentally Exposed a Covert Influence Network Targeting Americans

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