Elon Musk has finally done something good with X, even if it wasn’t necessarily the goal. Over the weekend, his social media company rolled out a new policy that allows users to see not only when an X account was created, but also where the account is from.

The new feature has led a number of pro-Donald Trump and pro-MAGA accounts to be unwittingly exposed as foreign trolls—who have had great success amassing followers and thus payments from Musk’s creator fund by capitalizing on the easily manipulated rubes in the Republican base.

"This is an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square. We plan to provide many more ways for users to verify the authenticity of the content they see on X," Nikita Bier, X's head of product, wrote in a post on the social media platform.

For example, the account @MAGANATIONX—which has nearly 400,000 followers and describes itself as an "America First" "Patriot Voice" who is "standing strong with President Trump"—is actually from a non-European Union country in Eastern Europe.

The account pushes voter fraud lies and posts questions seeking input from its followers about whether Democrats should be prosecuted. But it also sent a post that slammed the United States' support of Ukraine—which should have been a sign all alongthat the account was not on the level.

Meanwhile, the account @America_First0—which has more than 67,000 followers and once claimed to be an attractive female and former liberal who voted for Trump—is based in Bangladesh.

The account @KLeavittNews, a fan page for the White House press secretary with more than 13,000 followers that claims it's based in Washington, is actually from Macedonia. In fact, a number of these pro-Trump accounts have been exposed as being from the small Balkan nation.

Screenshot from X

An Ivanka Trump fan page that had more than 1 million followers was suspended after it was exposed as being from Nigeria. So too were a number of accounts that purported to be attractive, Trump-supporting white women but were actually from places like Thailand and Myanmar.

Exposing these accounts as foreign trolls is the first good thing Musk has done since he took over the platform—which has devolved into a disinformation hotbed filled with antisemitic, racist, and other discriminatory content.

In fact, the Centre for Information Resilience did a study during the 2024 election that said just how dangerous the fake MAGA accounts were. But now that users will be able to see where these accounts are from, their fake content could be called out before it spreads.

“Just think about the foreign influence operations that are happening right now on this app,” Brett Meiselas, co-founder of the liberal news site MeidasTouch, said in a video about the changes. “Think about the lawmakers who feel pressured by accounts like this. Think about the disinformation that spreads as a result of all these accounts out there.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos