In launching a new feature that identifies national origins of “X” accounts, the Elon Musk owned platform inadvertently confirmed what many of us have known for years – X, and it’s “MAGA” influencers are largely a platform for disinformation from enemies of democracy.
Business students around the world will be studying the brand reputation journey of the US startup Tesla for many years to come. They will have plenty of material to work with. While investors are still sweet on the diversified company overall, CEO Elon Musk seems more determined than ever to discourage prospective car buyers from putting up their own money to buy a Tesla EV.
The latest hit to Tesla’s brand reputation surfaced over the weekend, when word dropped that dozens of the leading, self-proclaimed MAGA influencers and US patriots who populate Musk’s personal social media site X (formerly Twitter) are not US patriots at all, or at least not the kind of patriots who are actually citizens of the US.
“Elon Musk’s social media site X has rolled out a new feature in an effort to increase transparency—and unwittingly revealed that many of the site’s top MAGA influencers are actually foreign actors,” Jack Revell of The Daily Beast reported on November 23.
The anonymity curtain was pulled back by the launch of X’s new “About This Account” feature on Friday, November 21, which included the location of origin for user accounts. “Upon rollout, rival factions began to inspect just where their online adversaries were really based on the combative social platform—with dozens of major MAGA and right-wing influencer accounts revealed to be based overseas,” Revell observed.
“Dozens of major accounts masquerading as ‘America First’ or ‘MAGA’ proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria,” he elaborated.
The Russia connection is no surprise, considering reports of the relationship Musk has formed with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Besides that, the broad influence of foreign actors on social media conversations in the US is well documented. Their effectiveness in changing the outcome of an election is less well documented, but the impact has been documented enough to prompt the FBI and CISA (the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) to issue a four-part PSA in the run-up to Election Day 2024.
“Foreign adversaries are using a variety of sophisticated disinformation campaigns, often leveraging new tools, such as generative artificial intelligence (AI), to craft and spread misleading content,” the agencies summarized in the fourth part of the PSA program.
Don’t just take their word for it. “The US’s three main strategic adversaries — Russia, China and Iran — were all involved in efforts to influence the 2024 election,” the European Institute for Security Studies noted in a briefing paper posted in December of 2024.
“This was not their first attempt: Russia interfered in the 2016 election, while China and Iran were active in the 2022 midterms,” EISS added.
In terms of a ripple effect on Tesla’s brand reputation and declining sales trajectory, the new revelations about foreign actors on X come at a particularly awkward period. Musk has been counting on the launch of new “affordable” EVs at around $40,000 to boost the automaker’s flagging sales, and blowback from the X debacle will not help.
The awkward timing of the revelations is even more awkwarder at a time when the mainstream media is beginning to sharpen its attention on Musk and his social media habits. “In recent weeks, the world’s wealthiest person used X to post about immigrants to Britain, saying they will cause the country’s collapse. He posted about examples of violent crime in Minnesota and South Carolina — where he does not live — and about judges in California and New York he believes are too lenient,” NBC News noted on November 22, in an analysis of Musk’s musings on X between September 17 and October 17.
We know from reporting in the Wall Street Journal that Musk has been having regular conversations with Vladimir Putin.
[Psst! Peter, it’s not ‘more awkwarder’, it’s ‘awkwarderer’. HTH]
If you want an inside look into how our society was hijacked by social media, and the tech-bros that created it, watch this 70 min program from the CBC’s Documentary Channel titled “Rise of the A**holes: why do we keep rewarding bad behaviour?”