Dozens of major X accounts promoting Donald Trump’s political agenda and other far-right narratives turn out to have been originally registered in Russia, Asia, and Africa. The information became available only after the platform introduced a new transparency feature called “About This Account.”
The ability to verify an account’s origin became available on X on Nov. 21. The feature shows where and when an account was set up, when it was verified, how often the username has been changed, and the country where the app was downloaded. By Nov. 23, the new feature had been partially disabled. However, by then users had already managed to determine the foreign origin of hundreds of pro-Trump pages.
Among the largest MAGA accounts operated from abroad were Ivanka News (1 million followers, registered in Nigeria), FAN TRUMP ARMY (589,000 followers, registered in India), MAGA Nation (more than 400,000 followers, registered in Eastern Europe outside the EU); and America First (67,600 followers, registered in Bangladesh).
Not only pro-Trump accounts turned out to have been registered far from their geographical area of focus. The pro-Russia profile RussiaNews (224,100 followers) is registered in the UAE. The pro-Israel Mariana Times (79,000 followers) is located in South Asia. Meanwhile, the pro-Palestinian accounts Gaza Notifications (438,000 followers) and Martyrs of Gaza (197,000 followers) are registered in Türkiye and Europe, respectively. Notably, a large cluster of accounts loyal to the Iranian regime had been registered in the country itself — despite the official ban on X and other social networks.
Soon after the new feature launched, information on some accounts was updated, and some pages were removed. Thus, the MAGA page Mary Tiles Texas, which users said had previously been registered in Russia, is now listed in the U.S. Meanwhile, the anti-Trump profile Ron Smith (52,900 followers) was deleted after it turned out the account was based not in New Jersey, but in Kenya.
X warned that an account’s location information can be altered with a VPN and may also change depending on a user’s movements. In addition, if the platform is accessed through a browser, information about the region where the app was downloaded will not be available.
Russia was accused of spreading disinformation through Twitter (X) and Facebook ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The campaigns included, in particular, the publication of thousands of fake ads on Facebook. Trump repeatedly denied allegations of coordinating his campaign with Russian representatives in the run-up to the 2016 election.