{"id":75351,"date":"2025-11-27T09:01:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T00:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2025\/nov\/27\/pro-trump-x-twitter-accounts-based-in-asia"},"modified":"2025-11-27T09:01:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T00:01:12","slug":"foreign-interference-or-opportunistic-grifting-why-are-so-many-pro-trump-x-accounts-based-in-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=75351","title":{"rendered":"Foreign interference or opportunistic grifting: why are so many pro-Trump X accounts based in Asia?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new feature on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter allows users to see the location of other accounts. It has resulted in a firestorm of recriminations<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cAmerica first\u201d and pro-Trump accounts originated overseas.<\/p>\n<p>The new feature <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/nov\/23\/rightwing-influencers-outside-us-x-twitter-tool\">was enabled over the weekend<\/a> by X\u2019s head of product, Nikita Bier, who called it the first step in \u201csecuring the integrity of the global town square.\u201d Since then many high-engagement accounts that post incessantly about US politics have been \u201cunmasked\u201d by fellow users.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2025\/nov\/27\/pro-trump-x-twitter-accounts-based-in-asia\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new feature on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter allows users to see the location of other accounts. It has resulted in a firestorm of recriminationsWhen X rolled out a new feature revealing the locations of popular accounts, the co&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3460,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,415,351,61,58,631,3267],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-donald-trump","category-internet","category-south-and-central-asia","category-technology","category-us-politics","category-x"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3460"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75351"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75352,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75351\/revisions\/75352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}