It was a change that sent shockwaves through social media.
Without warning, X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, turned on a new feature in late November that allowed users to see which country other accounts were posting from.
It instantly became clear that some of the most influential political accounts on the platform, massive accounts boasting millions of followers and impressive reach that drive conversations about social and political issues in the United States, are actually based overseas.
That big Ivanka Trump “fan account” that posts endless hot takes about illegal immigration to the United States? It’s actually based in Nigeria. Or the MAGAStorm account posting conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt on Trump? It’s run out of eastern Europe.
For years, these accounts and others like them have played a major role in spreading misleading and divisive narratives about U.S. politics.
Whether intentionally or not, X provided the world with smoking gun evidence that foreign actors have been able to hijack one of our largest communication platforms, and have been using it to manipulate public conversations. But if people had been listening to Black women online, none of this would have been a surprise.
For over a decade, Black women online have been warning that our social media platforms are easily hijacked by bad actors looking to sow chaos, division, and confusion. These bad actors often do so by pretending to belong to communities they aren’t part of. In 2020, for example, the “@ANTIFA_US” Twitter account appeared to represent anti-fascist causes, align with the Black Lives Matters movement, and racial justice uprisings. During protests, the account called for protesters to “move into residential areas… the white hoods…. and we take what’s ours.” Twitter higher ups confirmed this account was actually run by the white nationalist group Identity Evropa. According to Business Insider, this wasn’t even the first time the group had used the platform to create fake accounts to sow division and incite violence. The account was banned for using the platform to incite violence, but not before its divisive messages had been seen by millions of Americans, linking Black Lives Matter with calls to violence that actually came from white supremacists.
This trend goes back even further. In 2014, the late Shafiqah Hudson realized that bad actors were pretending to be Black women on Twitter. These fake accounts said outrageous things designed to spread confusion and mistrust in Black online communities and to foment racial animosity across American society. Hudson brought the issue to the attention of Twitter’s leaders, but nothing was done. So, she took matters into her own hands and championed an entire campaign to sniff them out, #YourSlipIsShowing. The campaign took off, and other users joined in using the hashtag to stamp out fake accounts. The hashtag is still used today. Tragically, despite how vital her work combating disinformation proved to be, Hudson was not meaningfully recognized for it and the people who ran platforms like Twitter seemed to learn nothing from her prescient warnings about how easily bad actors could manipulate social media platforms.
Manipulating our social media platforms to sow division doesn’t just degrade the experience of being on social media; it subverts our democracy, inflames racial discord, and makes us all angrier and more suspicious.
Unfortunately, rather than listen to the women like Shafiqah Hudson who spoke up about what they were experiencing, tech leaders largely ignored us. Worse, tech titans like Elon Musk not only took active steps that made exploiting social media platforms easier, but created a financial incentive for bad actors to do so. Musk eliminated the process of verification that had been implemented by Twitter, which had previously provided users the confidence that high-profile or celebrity accounts with blue checkmarks had been vetted and truly were who they claimed to be. Instead, one of Musk’s first moves after buying Twitter was to give a blue check to any user willing to spend $8 a month on X premium. That system of trust was destroyed, but now anyone can pay to ensure their posts enjoy more reach and visibility on the platform.
In addition to scrapping Twitter’s system of verification, X under Musk also implemented a payout system that pays cash to verified accounts based on the amount of engagement their posts achieve. A consequence of that financial incentive is that it’s no longer just foreign agents and domestic provocateurs using social media in nefarious ways to subvert American democracy. Now, cash strapped people in developing countries are also chasing those payouts by pumping out incendiary garbage content in the hopes of generating engagement for money.
If our communication platforms are merely stages for clowns to “entertain” via rage bait, racism, and lies, we’re surrendering the very tools meant to keep us informed and connected. A society that can’t trust its own public square can’t solve real problems. Now that so many politically influential accounts posing as “patriotic” Americans have been exposed to be inauthentic, we must acknowledge the severity of this problem, and confront it as a major threat undermining our democracy. We deserve better than a digital ecosystem built for chaos and profit over truth. It’s time to reclaim our attention, our discourse, and our democracy from those who see them as commodities to exploit.
Bridget Todd is a Public Voices Fellow on Technology in the Public Interest with The OpEd Project and an affiliate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She is the host of iHeartRadio’s award winning tech and culture podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet.