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The MAGA Twitter Apocalypse
Last week, Twitter descended into complete and utter chaos after Elon Musk rolled out a new feature called “About This Account.” The feature allowed anyone to click on the profile of an X user and see exactly what country the account was created in, where its user is currently based, and how many times the username has been changed.
Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” were identified as originating in places like India, Pakistan, Russia, or Nigeria, engagement farming to earn money through X’s creator revenue program, available to those who purchase a blue check. Law student and left-wing influencer Micah Erfan posted that the feature was “total armageddon for the online right.”
Charlie Warzel is a longtime technology writer at The Atlantic and host of the new Galaxy Brain podcast, who has been covering this rollout. He joined me on this week’s Power User podcast to discuss whether the “about this account” feature is truly 9/11 for MAGA Twitter, how our internet is being warped by inauthentic activity, whether we’ve reached the end of the social web, and what comes next. WATCH OUR EPISODE HERE!