Foreign interference or opportunistic grifting: why are so many pro-Trump X accounts based in Asia?
When X rolled out a new feature revealing the locations of popular accounts, the company was acting to boost transparency and clamp down on disinformation,The result, however, has been a circular firing squad of recriminations, as users turn on each other enraged by the revelation that dozens of popular “America first” and pro-Trump accounts originated overseas,The new feature was enabled over the weekend by X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, who called it the first step in “securing the integrity of the global town square,” Since then many high-engagement accounts that post incessantly about US politics have been “unmasked” by fellow users,An Ivanka Trump fan account that posts about illegal immigration to the US was shown to be based in Nigeria.
MAGAStorm, spreading conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt on Trump, was found to be in eastern Europe.AmericanVoice which posts anti-Islam content, is based in India.Users have noted that a high proportion of these potentially misleading accounts – many of which claim to be in America – are operating from Asia, but experts are in disagreement over whether they may be state-backed influence campaigns or even opportunists trying to make a quick buck.In 2024 the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) revealed that a network of accounts on X were posing as young American women, stealing images from European influencers to burnish their credibility.Often these images were manipulated to include pro-Trump hats and clothing.
The new location feature on X has allowed Benjamin Strick, who ran the original investigation, to confirm that almost all of these accounts purporting to be “independent Trump supporting” women are located in Thailand,Strick noted that while promising to “follow patriots” and “stand with Trump”, these accounts often also posted anti-Islamic content too,In their 2024 report, the CIR found that these accounts exploited “pre-existing societal tensions” in their efforts to spread disinformation,“Accounts seized upon news stories relating to gender and LGBTQ+ rights, in some cases allowing them to undermine Democratic policies and promote Republican views,”Fears that foreign actors are using social media to influence US voters reached their zenith in the months after Trump’s 2016 election win over Hillary Clinton.
An intelligence assessment the following year detailed the steps that the Russian state took to bolster Trump using bot farms.In the years since, experts have warned that foreign influence campaigns are becoming more sophisticated, but as America’s politics has become more partisan and voters more siloed, those warnings appear to have been forgotten.However it’s possible though that the sheer number of pro-Trump accounts around the world might have as much to do with turning a profit as political influence, says Simon Copland, a researcher at the Australian National University.“Social media is really based on attention … [and] on places like X or Twitter you can get money from that,” he says, adding that at the moment, the best way to get attention “is to be posting about Donald Trump.”Changes to the way X monetises its content could be a factor as well.
In 2024, the platform announced that creators would now be paid based on the levels of engagement with their content,At the time, some expressed concern that this would incentivise users to create more and more controversial content,“When platforms begin to reward engagement, creators will begin posting anything that drives a discussion of some sort, including posts that are designed to enrage users, forcing them to reply or comment,” TechCrunch wrote at the time,“That’s where things like rage bait come about,” says Copland,“People deliberately induce rage to try to encourage people to go on to the platforms” and engage in the content.
The calculations used to determine a user’s payments remain opaque and it’s not clear how much money overseas users posing as Maga-faithful could be making.A BBC investigation from 2024 suggested that for some, it could be thousands of dollars.Experts in southeast Asia’s disinformation space say such figures could be highly motivating for people in the region.A 2021 report into southeast Asia’s “disinformation crisis” found that many accounts pushing xenophobic and misogynistic messages to appeal to the US right were not particularly invested ideologically, but “driven by almost purely entrepreneurial motivations.”While the perpetually online cadre of Trump’s followers erupt in anger over the origins of some accounts – many of which have now been suspended – others have been left questioning why the issue matters at all.
Copland points to the flow of rightwing ideas, and how policies dreamed up in dank corners of the internet can make their way to the heights of US and European politics,On the night that X began to reveal the location of accounts, Donald Trump shared a post from an account called Trump_Army_,With nearly 600,000 followers, the account regularly amplifies conspiracy theories; in a recent post it asked its followers if “JFK was killed for trying to expose the same crooks Trump is now exposing”,Soon after, another user pointed out that Trump_Army_ was based in India,It’s among the more innocuous examples, but illustrative of the way the wider ecosystem of right-wing politics operates online.
“Extreme ideas start in these dark corners of the internet.They spread, they become memes, they go on to more mainstream platforms and then you see politicians pick them up,” says Copland.‘In May, Trump ambushed South African president Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, accusing him of turning a blind eye to a “white genocide” against South African farmers.These widely discredited claims are thought to have in-part originated in far-right chatrooms.“We have to be taking this stuff seriously,” he warns, because these ideas “are suddenly becoming mainstream.
”X was approached for comment.
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