Three Levels of Manipulation on X, Only Two Of Which Are Addressed By “Location” Disclosure
‘Location’ feature implemented by X reveals fake foreign and fake MAGA accounts targeting Israel and Trump, but the boosting of malicious American accounts by foreigners still is hidden.
I appeared on November 25, 2025, on The Tony Katz Show to talk about the dismissal of the indictments against James Comey and Letitia James, and then about the fraud exposed on X as a result of the location disclosure feature recently implemented:
In a world increasingly dominated by social media narratives, a new tool on Elon Musk’s X platform is pulling back the curtain on widespread manipulation of online discourse, particularly regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict. This development may fundamentally change how we evaluate information on social media.
Cornell Law professor William Jacobson, founder of Legal Insurrection, explained how X’s new location disclosure feature has exposed an alarming pattern of deception. “For a long time, many of us, including me, have been complaining that what’s happening on X is obviously a foreign information operation,” Jacobson stated during the interview. “What you have is you have foreign operations getting their people boosted on X to create a false narrative.”
Here an excerpt from my post we discussed, Foreign Fake MAGA Anti-Israel Accounts Exposed In X “Location” Disclosure:
If you have spent any time on X (fka Twitter), you know that it is a cesspool of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, frequently neo-Nazi accounts that purport to be “America First” and “MAGA” and posting from the United States, frequently red states.
The X algorithms for the “For You” feed were unbearable.
But I and many others suspected that many, if not most, of these accounts, particularly the ones that purported to be “MAGA” were fakes.
It was part of the worldwide information war against Israel, the only successful war the people who now identify as Palestinians have ever fought. From false claims of Genocide and Famine to inflated casualty numbers, to concealing that Hamas fought from under, within, and around hospitals and schools, the goal was to turn people in the West — and particularly among younger conservatives — against Israel. The Tucker Carlsons of the podcast and influencer world fed off and amplified these social media narratives.
Now we know that it was all a massive foreign influence operation of fake MAGA accounts meant not to promote Trump, but to turn Americans against Jews and Israel and to sow chaos and division among actual Trump supporters.
If it’s happening on X, it’s happening elsewhere on social media.
X has turned live a “location” function that lets you know from where the account is posting (and whether they are trying to hide location through a VPN). The result is that many of the most manipulative supposedly MAGA accounts were frauds posting from abroad.
While the location disclosure was important, already bad actors are hiding where they are from, and at best it’s a partial measure. As I discussed in the segment, it’s also important to know who is boosting legitimately American accounts pushing the same lies.
. @X @elonmusk should expand the location feature to include follower and engagement location analytics, will reveal an additional level of the manipulation, particularly with so many accounts hiding their posting location now. https://t.co/84dzzcwfGb
— William A. Jacobson (@wajacobson) November 26, 2025
I’ve set the video and audio below to start to play where we discussed X, but you can easily listen to the whole thing including the discussion of Comey by scrolling to the beginning.
Watch below:
Partial Transcript (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity)
Katz (05:51):
Talking to William Jacobson, Cornell law professor, legalinsurrection.com. Let me bring you to this. You’ve got the story there at legalinsurrection.com, “Foreign Fake MAGA Anti-Israel Accounts Exposed In X “Location” Disclosure.” Take the time. Walk me through it. What is it that Elon Musk and X have now allowed to take place? What can you see, and what, in your view, and as you’re writing about it, what does it expose that people who are utilizing social media as a way of getting news need to know?
WAJ (06:25):
Well, for a long time, many of us, including me, have been complaining that what’s happening on X is obviously a foreign information operation. It’s obvious interference, it’s obvious bot activity. None of this is new.
And what has happened is that X bases itsalgorithms and other things on engagement. And the more you get engaged, the more they boost you. And so what you have is you have foreign operations getting their people boosted on X to create a false narrative. And unfortunately, it’s been particularly with regard to Israel, but it’s also negative towards Trump.
And so what you finally had happen, finally, after years of this, you have X turning live a feature where you can see where the account is posting from, or if they’re trying to hide that through a VPN, then it will show you that they’re using A VPN, which is a signal they’re trying to hide, or could be a signal.
And what we found was that there’s an entire industry out there of, and I’ll break it down into multiple tiers. First of all, fake Gaza war accounts, people supposedly posting from Gaza about atrocities that of course never happened. And in fact, now know that they’re not in Gaza, they’re not in the Middle East. A lot of them are <crosstalk>.
Katz (07:49):
They’re nowhere near
WAJ (07:51):
<crosstalk> in Pakistan, Bangladesh, these are operations of people posting, you know, ‘I’m sitting in a tenting Gaza and eight children just got killed by Israel’. Well, that person’s posting from Bangladesh and in one case from Poland. So this is complete fakery that has created a narrative of genocide and other things in the Israel Gaza War, which are simply not true. And that has penetrated, that has changed the public consciousness.
So those are the fake accounts, posting fake information.
And then you have the fake MAGA accounts, which are very viciously going after Israel, ‘America First’ ‘America Only’, you know, ‘I can’t afford a house because we give $3 billion a year to Israel’. All those sort of narratives, which have also penetrated.
But it turns out that they’re not by real America First accounts. A lot of them are not by people even in the United States. Again, the usual suspects, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, elsewhere in the Middle East. So what you have is, you have stoking of hatred towards Israel by supposedly America First accounts, which often say, ‘I’m from Texas and I’m not gonna stand …’ and ‘I don’t like the Israel occupation of our government, and I’m in Texas’, and the person’s actually in Bangladesh, and it’s just complete fakery.
So you have a real narrative, and I think damage has been done.
Katz (09:27):
Talking to William Jacobson, Cornell law professor, legalinsurrection.com. I agree with you that the damage has been done. Elon’s doing this, was this, I’ve heard some people say, Hey, it was this person’s idea or somebody spoke to ’em about this. This is really a lifting of the veil and more transparency that we’ve seen from certainly other social media platform. Before we get just a little bit deeper, is there a belief that this will change how people see or engage with the content that’s now out there?
WAJ (09:59):
I hope so. I really do hope so.
There’s also a third tier of this manipulation, which really has not been exposed by this location data, which is the promotion of certain accounts. So not only do you have fake accounts posting fake news about what’s happening in Gaza, what’s supposedly the feelings of America First people towards Israel, you also have bot accounts that are promoting legitimate American accounts.
So there we should not be deceived. This is not all foreigners. There are Americans doing this stuff too, and they are getting boosted, and that’s not been exposed.
What I’d love to see is transparency as to where the people retweeting, reposting, sharing, liking posts, are from. So in addition to saying where is the person posting from, I think it would be great to have a country by country breakdown of who’s sharing their content because I think what you’re going to find is a lot of legitimately American accounts, who are nasty people, are getting promoted, just in the way that these fake accounts promoted themselves. And I think that’s really got to be be the next thing, because this is a massive disinformation operation. This is a massive manipulation of our country.
Katz (11:21):
I’m not disagreeing, Sir, not at all. You and I are on the same page on this. Is there a legal remedy or is there a legal obligation that Elon Musk has and X has to not allowing that to take place? I mean, can you regulate who retweets whom?
WAJ (11:40):
Well, you know, criticizing it and exposing it and providing transparency is not the same as preventing it. And so that’s a whole different argument.
And one of the reasons the rules were relaxed so much is that we saw under the Biden administration pressure on Facebook, pressure on other social media operations to censor content.
I remember in our own account at Legal Insurrection on Facebook, we just avoided posting anything about climate change or COVID or whatever, because they so heavily censored it. We’d get tagged on it by Facebook and you get three or four tags and all of a sudden they kick you off the platform. So we just avoided it completely because we didn’t agree with the popular narrative.
And so that’s the extreme that people reacted to and said, we should have absolutely no limitations on Twitter and social media.
And now we’re seeing the byproduct of that is that foreigners have jumped into the void to manipulate systems that have no control mechanism in them.
What is the right answer? I think we’re heading towards the right answer. And it’s transparency. It’s don’t allow these foreigners to pretend, you know, ‘I’m a redneck from Texas and I don’t want my money going to Israel’, or ‘I’m not gonna die for Israel’. Meanwhile, you’re sitting in Bangladesh, that sort of stuff. I think transparency is probably the best answer rather than censorship.
Now I do believe that it would be consistent with free speech and free exchange of ideas for Twitter to say, if you are going to lie about where you are, then maybe that’s a violation of our terms. We are not gonna censor you for your opinion, but if you’re going to conduct fraud on our platform, and you’re going to misrepresent yourself as being, you know, a farmer in Missouri, but you’re actually just a bot farm in India, that’s a misrepresentation, that’s a fraud on the platform.
And I would like to see that sort of outright fraud and misrepresentation addressed by X because it’s already in their terms of service, they’re just not enforcing it. I don’t think we need opinions censored, but fraud should absolutely be regulated.
I don’t know if it’s a legal obligation, but it certainly would be an X’s interest because up until recently, and certainly with this exposure, it has now the reputation of being a manipulation device. And I don’t think that’s what Elon Musk wanted it to be. He wanted to be a place where people could freely exchange their ideas. Instead, it’s a, a site for rampant fraud.
Katz (14:29):
William Jacobson, Cornell Law professor, legalinsurrection.com. I appreciate you taking the time to be with us.
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Comments
“X has turned live a “location” function that lets you know from where the account is posting (and whether they are trying to hide location through a VPN).”
It turns out that posters denying the existence of aliens are actually aliens posting from a another planet trying to fool us about the existence of aliens.
I’m not saying it’s aliens, but it’s aliens.
Sure, an alien would say that “Paula”
A feature I’d like to see is the ability to inherit suspected bot blocking.
If you get a follower who has been blocked by anyone you follow and has been flagged as a suspected bot, they are blocked by me automatically. This would be a force multiplier in weeding out the bots.
But perhaps I’m over estimating WAJ and Leslie’s efforts in blocking bot followers.
There are a number of reliable Dem accounts that show up in my feed with a post, and well over a thousand likes inside of 15-20 minutes, then nothing. I have no idea if these Dems are buying the clicks, or if there are various left-wing groups feeding money into the clicker to boost their voices, but the message is *always* right down the line according to the DNC Narrative.
But how can you tell that from the real brain-dead drones who vote that way?
And does it even matter?
Engage and they will call you a racist and block you. Like chess, the fewer moves it takes, the more cogent your argument.
I seem to remember a story from a few years ago about buying clicks to drive traffic.
Another useful tool to add into this mix of transparency not just on X but across the social media landscape is to add who/what organizations or sometimes Foreign gov’t are providing financial payments to content creators. This way we’d know not just the location of given creator or if foreign accounts were boosting their likes/retweets/view count but also if there’s some entity, maybe a foreign govt or some foreign NGO/Billionaire paying them to post. That would take some serious effort and commitment to go through the various public disclosures like FARA to pin that back to a particular content creator in the same way as location data. Would probably need to create a ‘FARA lite’ to capture payments from foreign individuals, Corporations, NGO, and other foreign entities to content creators to push a particular narrative.
“ but also if there’s some entity, maybe a foreign govt or some foreign NGO/Billionaire paying them to post.”
Like, ummmm, USAID?
Absolutely, that’s a great idea to include US gov’t paid propaganda, plenty of room on the eventual spreadsheet/flowchart to display those manipulation attempts as well. The more sunlight and transparency about who is trying to craft curated, non organic narratives the better.
There are good reasons to hide where the poster location is. China is a good example in political posts. The problem is identifying posts that don’t involve an authoritarian regime where death is a possibility but for other posts.
Anyone who didn’t think X, Bluesky, TicTok etc were not full of bot and fake accounts was dreaming. I bet 80% of Fuentes followers are foreign or fake.
Foreign or domestic, they all share the same deluded leftist ideology of the Democrats.
They get a command, and they follow through, like good drones. See: alleged military people coming out of the woodwork to support insurrectionist Mark Kelly.
These 6 Democrats are not providing a helpful reminder to our military members, this is actually a threat. Anyone in Service already knows that they should not and do not have to follow illegal orders. But what the Democrats are doing here is insisting that personnel have now been given notice not to follow any orders that the Left considers “illegal”, implying that they will be held accountable if they do, once this faction regains power.