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

hindustantimes.com

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

#161

Post by throwaway48476 »

seattle_spring wrote: post #145
energy123 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like being wilfully uninformed. Russia organized almost a dozen Black Lives Matter protests, one of them attended by Michael Moore. They ran about half of the largest US identity focused Facebook groups (Christian/Black/etc) during the 2020 US election. I gave you one small example, it's on you to look for the full picture rather than jump to an erroneous conclusion based on god knows what motivations. Th…

> This sounds like being wilfully uninformed. Russia organized almost a dozen Black Lives Matter protests, one of them attended by Michael Moore. They ran about half of the largest US identity focused Facebook groups (Christian/Black/etc) during the 2020 US election Maybe it wasn't your intent, but your comment makes it sound like this was an issue with only a single side of the political spectrum. However... https:/…

Tenet is a good example that they don't pay for specific words to be said, they pay to amplify outlets who are already saying what they want amplified.

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

#162

Post by lurk2 »

anonymars wrote: post #21
Zigurd wrote: post #13

This is another piece of a mosaic that is going to reveal that grey zone warfare by Russia against the west has much larger scope than most people are aware of. The UK National Crime Agency uncovered a huge money laundering enterprise based on the kinds of crime that fly under the national security radar in most places.

Indeed. Can I interest you in the good old USA project? https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-d... See exhibit 8 and such: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1366201/dl Or 10 which specifically talks about Twitter https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1366191/dl

Interesting read. Thank you for sharing. Was there ever any evidence that they hit their projected metrics? A million followers after a year seems ambitious.

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

#163

Post by 8note »

agentifysh wrote: post #7

X obviously isn't the only platform where this is taking place and it is curious as to why they rolled it back. how open are you to a US citizen verified town square online? You'd have to scan your passport or driver license to post memes and stuff.

if a guy in india can make great MAGA posts, is that really a problem?

its got the followers because the followers want to read and reshare it.

id maybe like to see the location of origin as a pie chart on the followers list, as well as on what theyre following, but if the idea is good(for whatever definition if good)

is being american even particularly relevant? i dont think the random guy in indiana's opinions on Mamdani are any more relevant than a random guy in nigeria's.

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

#164

Post by shoobiedoo »

spprashant wrote: post #106
duxup wrote: post #19

I never quite "got" twitter, it was never fun for me to participate on. It's telling / disturbing that folks had such trust in random accounts ...

For a long time, I did not get twitter either. But it seems to be the only popular platform where the academics and intellectual class want to hangout. Economists, researchers, policy wonks prefer posting on twitter over any other social platform.

It is also the only way to get my city's public transport system to reply to queries about why a bus is extremely late, when/if it is coming. I always get a nice polite reply because it's publicly available. If I call I get stonewalled with endless call center rerouting eventually leading to a dial tone

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

#165

Post by 8note »

afavour wrote: post #74

People will read all kinds of political implications into this but IMO it reflects something simpler and perhaps more damning for X: that paying users for the engagement their posts make is a fundamentally bad idea. If you’re looking to make some money on X you want engagement. If you want engagement you want to say controversial things people will argue about. What better than right wing US politics, especially when…

yeah, id reasonably describe the results as a list of locations where the couple bucks that twitter will pay is enough to get by.

for canada though, id like to see the CBC dedicatedly paying canadians to post canadian perspectives on social media

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

#166

Post by lurk2 »

energy123 wrote: post #143
lurk2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where are all these Israeli accounts? The Department of Homeland Security, for one. Edit: Link removed as I was disinformed by a /pol/ PsyOp.

That is a doctored image according to both DHS and X's head of product. What kind of information bubble are you in?

Looks like you’re right:

https://xcancel.com/nikitabier/status/1992382852328255743

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

#167

Post by dawnerd »

ddtaylor wrote: post #94
lateforwork wrote: post #24

I assume the country of origin is detected based on IP address. These fakers will now create Azure VMs hosted in the US, then login to those VMs and use X from the VM. A lot of scammers disguise their location using this method.

Residential VPNs are already so cheap.

Exactly how anyone still scraping Twitter does it. Dirt cheap. Same with accounts to use to get around api limits.

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

#168

Post by throwaway48476 »

lurk2 wrote: post #153
prmph wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think IP addresses can't be spoofed rather easily? What political interest does a Nigerian have in swaying US opinion?

> What political interest does a Nigerian have in swaying US opinion? They’re grifters; their interest in American politics is commercial. Indians were targeting Trump supporters with fake news for ad revenue as early as 2015; this is a continuation of that model.

It was so successful that they took over the FBI.

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

#169

Post by throwaway48476 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #102
lurk2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The network was small: just 49 Facebook accounts, 85 Instagram accounts and 71 Twitter accounts in question. This is the pattern with all Russian influence operations; they’re always implied to be ominously large and end up being laughably small. American political polarization had nothing to do with the Russians; this is just the refrain of frustrated Democrats who refuse to acknowledge the consequences of ill-con…

It would be silly if the Russians weren't stirring shit up in the enemy camp. That's what the Russians do. It's too difficult to improve their own country, their own lives, and their own prospects, so they focus on the next-best strategy for the acquisition of power, which is dragging everybody else down to their level.

It wouldn't be difficult to improve Russia. Just the kelptocracy makes it impossible. "Why go to the moon when we have craters (potholes) here in samara" -some kid on tiktok.

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

#170

Post by DustinEchoes »

ro_bit wrote: post #72

Reminds me of when Reddit posted their year end roundup https://web.archive.org/web/20140409152507/http://www.reddit... and revealed their “most addicted city” to be the home of Eglin Air Force Base, host of a lot of military cyber operations. They edited the article shortly afterward to remove this inconvenient statistic

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38974383
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