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X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

vice.com

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Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#21

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

cluckindan wrote: post #6

This is a good thing. Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-influencers-accidenta... ”Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria. In one example, the account MAGANationX—with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We Th…

This has long been pretty obvious to anyone using Nitter on desktop. There, you can ctrl-click on usernames to open a new tab, and it is readily obvious from the account’s post history that the people behind so many “authentic American” accounts are not authentic Americans. They make little telltale mistakes in their English, they post single-mindedly about a particular topic like few real people (no matter how much they like political battle) would, the profile pic was obviously created by GAN3-style AI, etc.

It’s fast and trivial to verify on any non-enshittified interface. One of the problems with modern social media is that people are looking at it (usually on their phones) through the platform’s intentionally crippled UI that doesn’t allow quickly opening new views.

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#22

Post by amelius »

cluckindan wrote: post #14
isodev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a lot of effort to make them appear as if connecting from the USA without the use of VPN. Giving them a label based on their ... current proxy? ... is not a solution at all.

If it’s not a lot of effort, why aren’t they already doing that?

Cat and mouse, the next step.

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#23

Post by rvz »

This follows from the other changes made exposing fake/bot/scam X accounts created in different locations posing as "real" users. This just takes it into another level.

Unrelated, but the amount of ads on Vice.com has become insufferable to the point where I cannot read the article without an ad-blocker with any default installed browser.

If you don't want to switch to Firefox and are still using a Chromium-based browser, get Ublock Origin Lite [0] which still works.

[0] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#24

Post by ACCount37 »

jmclnx wrote: post #5

I do not use twitter, so do not care. But if you use a fake name and fake email, which people should be using on twitter, who cares. Also if you self host your VPN, how would twitter know. Looks like only people using a commercial VPN will be flagged.

Websites can still guess that an IP is non-residential. There's a difference between an IP at Comcast and an IP at DigitalOcean. This takes some effort to work around.

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#25

Post by _heimdall »

cluckindan wrote: post #6

This is a good thing. Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-influencers-accidenta... ”Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria. In one example, the account MAGANationX—with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We Th…

Companies requiring that you use potentially poor privacy and security protocols isn't a good thing. Using a VPN doesn't make one a bot or a spammer.

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#27

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

webdevver wrote: post #15
cluckindan wrote: post #6

This is a good thing. Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-influencers-accidenta... ”Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria. In one example, the account MAGANationX—with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We Th…

actually incredibly bullish for america. everybody wants to be american. nobody with agency is rooting for anything other than the US. seriously, if youre not topblasting the S&P, i dont know what to tell you. theres like the entire 2nd and 3rd world combined waiting for their paycheque to come in every month so they can spend it on the US. by 2100, we are gonna have a graveyard of langauges that nobody speaks anymor…

You think foreign interference in your politics means everyone wants to be American? That's a very, very optimistic view of what's going on.

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#28

Post by jschoe »

jmclnx wrote: post #5

I do not use twitter, so do not care. But if you use a fake name and fake email, which people should be using on twitter, who cares. Also if you self host your VPN, how would twitter know. Looks like only people using a commercial VPN will be flagged.

Self-hosting a VPN is not entirely straightforward. If you rent a server from Hetzner, for example, and your IP address is linked to Hetzner, it's obvious that it's not a genuine residential IP address.

What you need is a VPN that provides a genuine residential IP address. It's possible to do this, but not easy to set up for everyone.

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#29

Post by kardianos »

cluckindan wrote: post #6

This is a good thing. Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-influencers-accidenta... ”Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria. In one example, the account MAGANationX—with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We Th…

I agree it is a good thing.

These so-called "America First" and "MEGA" accounts have been driving a wedge within the conservative party for a while. Many speculated that these were largely foreign accounts, but it was hard to prove, until now.

Many of the racist "conservative" voices are being shown to be from Iran or other countries.

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#30

Post by danillonunes »

webdevver wrote: post #15
cluckindan wrote: post #6

This is a good thing. Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-influencers-accidenta... ”Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria. In one example, the account MAGANationX—with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We Th…

actually incredibly bullish for america. everybody wants to be american. nobody with agency is rooting for anything other than the US. seriously, if youre not topblasting the S&P, i dont know what to tell you. theres like the entire 2nd and 3rd world combined waiting for their paycheque to come in every month so they can spend it on the US. by 2100, we are gonna have a graveyard of langauges that nobody speaks anymor…

They don't care about being American. They want the sweet American dollars that X is paying for engagement. They figured out the MAGA crowd is the easiest to engage, so that's where they go.
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