Elon really, really doesn't think things through

Over on X, they just rolled out the public feature that reveals where accounts are located. I've found several major Elon Musk fan accounts that are run out of Africa and two major MAGA accounts are run out of Europe

— steven monacelli (@stevanzetti.bsky.social) November 22, 2025 at 3:34 PM

(Special Investigative Correspondent for the Texas Observer)

Holy shit. So Elon decides it would be nice to know what region of the world people are posting from. So they add that little feature. 2 hours later they figure out that many Trump supporters with millions of followers are posting from other countries. Surprise! That "feature" is now gone.

— TheRoadie. (@roadie63.bsky.social) November 23, 2025 at 7:29 AM

This is a funny story (how could they not see this coming?), but it’s also an important one. It almost certainly won’t get the coverage it deserves, but news organizations are starting to pick up on it (though, as expected, The New York Times is dragging its feet).

On some level, this is telling us something we already knew, but that doesn’t mean we should find it any less appalling or feel any less responsibility to face the consequences now that our suspicions have been confirmed. If anything, these new revelations should prompt a round of soul-searching from the journalists who decided that the uncovering of the Tennant operation—where we learned that some of the most prominent far-right influencers were literally on the Russian payroll—was a three-day story. Of course, we won’t see any soul-searching from these people, but we should.

We’ve made this point before, but journalists and political scientists have got to stop treating MAGA and the rise of Trump as an organic, spontaneous phenomenon rather than a massive experiment in social engineering. I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue to look at the social and economic forces that helped and continue to shape the current Republican Party, but anyone studying this needs to start from the assumption that large parts of it have been deliberately cultivated over the years.

One complicating factor is that while many—perhaps most—of the far-right influencer accounts on TwitterX are foreign actors operating under false identities, many are lying on a freelance basis. They are being paid not by Russia or China but by the site in exchange for generating so many clicks. It turns out that spreading falsehoods and undermining American democracy can be its own reward, financially speaking.

If I’m understanding this correctly, X is owned by a white nationalist who pays poor people of color in developing countries to pretend to be working class white Americans to scare other white Americans into being afraid poor people of color from developing countries are going to ruin America?

— Max Berger (@maxberger.bsky.social) November 23, 2025 at 11:30 AM

Anyone who has read up on the Cold War knows that this sort of thing is nothing new. Propaganda both overt and covert was flowing from both sides for decades. The difference is, though, are substantial. The technology is more advanced, the techniques are more sophisticated, and this campaign has been terrifyingly successful.