A social-media exposé reveals ‘American’ influencers exploit us from abroad

Americans are encouraged to hesitate to trust mainstream media as they’ve lied repeatedly about major issues — COVID being one of the worst cases — and protected powerful political figures by smearing dissident voices.

But the alternative of social media as the town square for free-flowing information has proven just as (or more) propagandistic and fake.

This information pipeline has introduced a huge problem by allowing foreigners to sway debate and give a false impression of American consensus on policy desires and political movements.

Social-media platform X just made the geolocation of every account public, providing the user’s region or exact country and revealing if the person is hiding his or her location with a virtual private network.

With this new feature, everyone in the X political space quickly realized many prominent voices and proselytizers are pretending to be American or in the West, for financial gain or to sway discussion for foreign benefits.

Even the @American account — now suspended — was based in Pakistan!

Clearly, users inject themselves into American political discussion without disclosing they’re outsiders and creating false impressions about our country’s politics.

I’ve known for years everyone cares about what’s happening in America; in many cases people follow our politics closer than they do their homeland’s.

The excuse is always they’re invested in our drama because what happens here will eventually affect where they live.

But the problem is they’re only focused on our mess and invest most of their energy engaging in American debate through a limited foreign lens.

The X reveal has forced me to question everything about the social-media world, even beyond my natural skepticism.

The American doppelgänging wasn’t specific to a particular movement or political philosophy; the entire world has access to our town square and could deceptively escalate our drama.

X is the rare platform prominent people regularly use, including (especially) journalists. What happens there gives them news stories to report and an impression of what the electorate feels about a given topic.

Outsiders providing their distant opinions and tainting the debate can sway politicians to take positions against American interests and the media establishment to report on fake concerns.

We are always complaining about bot accounts inflating the dialogue, but we presumed the very active and larger social accounts are genuine in their American identity.

The danger is an adversarial state actor could fund foreign influencer accounts and manipulate the American public anonymously.

What if these accounts based in India, Pakistan and Nigeria are just fronts for another nation that gets its rocks off by causing chaos and poisoning our political wells?

The great revelation is just so much happening online is unreliable and fake, only for the purpose of being a feedback loop for what you already believe.

The freedom I thought would come from being less dependent on mainstream-media biases only created an even more dysfunctional social media that doesn’t value being honorable or upholding an ounce of integrity.

We now live in information silos, and this led to us being exploitable by outside agitators and grifters who know the exact words to welcome us inside their fake world.

They understand niche social dilemmas and tailor their propaganda dividing groups of people with videos affirming their hatred.

The controversial account Black Barbies, which claimed to be that of an African-American feminist, was exposed as a foreigner repeatedly posting content relentlessly portraying black men in a negative light for profit.

Black men “are so UGLEEE & undesirable. They can’t find a way to attract women without using force, insecurity or exploitation. Truly the most disgusting group of m(e)n” is a typical post.

Radio Genoa, an account catering to the white-nationalist crowd with all posts depicting nonwhites as violent and anti-social, turns out to be a Cambodian man, apparently. Even the white supremacists are being outsourced!

“ ‘From Dearborn to New York, one nation under Allah!’ It sounds like a threat to Americans. This won’t end well,” he said in one of his many posts predicting imminent civil war — which featured one crazy dude.

Foreign agitators were effective infiltrators because of our predictability — we want to ingest anything confirming either Team Blue or Red is correct.

I always knew there was something fake about the media’s claims of urgency, especially when we’re told there’s a “new danger on the rise” in the politicosphere.

The supposed powder keg that is America, as we’re constantly told we’re about to explode, never shows itself in most American life.

We survived years of negative messaging about how there’s no cohesion in our melting-pot society, and I witnessed the complete opposite in the multiple states I’ve lived in and traveled through.

When you go out and interact with real Americans, they don’t act or talk in the crazed and irreverent ways we see in online sociopaths’ destructively fake narratives.

While I lament the mainstream media cover up stories that don’t support their agenda, it doesn’t mean anyone independent is de facto trustworthy or legitimate.

The lesson is to verify all journalists’ claims, even if they buttress your own positions. Either we’re sincerely seeking the truth or we’re no better than attendees at our daily political pep-rallies.

Take the position that everything is fake until you can verify otherwise to save your sanity and yourself from being a profit motive for foreign grifters and agitators.

Adam B. Coleman is the author of “The Children We Left Behind” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing.