The reposts and expressions of shock from public figures came quickly after a user on the social media platform They are of great importance in the presidential competition.
“Very disturbing,” X’s owner, Elon Musk, responded twice to the post last week.
“Are Immigrants Registering to Vote Using the Social Safety Net?” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ally of former President Trump, asked on Instagram, using the abbreviation for Social Security number.
Trump himself posted on his own social platform within hours to ask: “Who are all these registered voters without photo ID in Texas, Pennsylvania and Arizona??? What's going on???”
State election officials quickly found themselves forced to respond. They said the user who vowed to fight, expose and mock “wokeness” was wrong and misrepresented Social Security Administration data. Actual voter registrations during the aforementioned time period were significantly lower than the numbers shared online.
Steven Richer, the recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, has refuted that claim in multiple X posts. Jane Nelson, Texas Secretary of State, issued a statement that she described as “completely inaccurate.”
However, by the time they tried to correct the record, the false claim had become widespread. In three days, the user's nickname prompt had more than 63 million views on X, according to the platform's metrics. A comprehensive explainer from Richer attracted a fraction of that, reaching 2.4 million users.
The incident highlights how social media accounts that protect the identities of the people or groups behind them with clever slogans and cartoon avatars have come to dominate right-wing political debate online even as they spread false information.
The accounts have massive reach that is boosted by engagement algorithms, by social media companies that greatly downplay or eliminate efforts to remove false or harmful material, and by endorsements from prominent figures like Musk. They can also extract significant financial rewards from X and other platforms by stoking anger against Democrats.
Many internet personalities are known as patriotic citizen journalists who expose real corruption. However, their apparent ability to spread disinformation unchecked while concealing their true motives has experts concerned as the United States navigates a presidential election year.
They are exploiting a long history of trust in American whistleblowers and anonymous sources, said Samuel Woolley, director of the Propaganda Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin.
“With these types of accounts, there is the temptation of secrecy, and there is the idea that they might somehow know something that others don’t,” he said. “They choose the language of true whistleblowing or democratically oriented leaking. In fact, what they are doing is antithetical to democracy.”
The allegation that spread online last week misused Social Security Administration data to track routine requests by states to verify the identity of individuals who registered to vote using the last four digits of their Social Security number. These applications are often submitted multiple times to the same individual, meaning they do not necessarily correspond to people registered to vote.
The bigger kicker is that the data in question represents people who entered the United States illegally and supposedly registered to vote with the Social Security numbers they obtained to obtain work authorization documents. But only US citizens are allowed to vote in federal elections, and illegal voting by those who are not eligible to vote is extremely rare because states have procedures to prevent it.
Anonymous accounts have flourished online for years, gaining followers for their content on politics, humor, human rights and more. People have used anonymity on social media to avoid persecution by repressive authorities or to speak freely about sensitive experiences. Many left-wing protesters adopted anonymous online identities during the Occupy Wall Street movement in early 2010.
But the rapid rise of a group of pseudonymous right-wing influencers who act as alternative sources of information has been more recent. This coincided with a decline in public trust in government and the media during the 2020 presidential election and the Covid-19 pandemic.
These influencers often spread misinformation and misleading content, often in service of the same recurring narratives such as alleged voter fraud, a “woke agenda” or Democrats supposedly encouraging a wave of people through illegal immigration to steal elections or replace white people. They often use similar content and reshare each other's posts.
The account that spread the recent misinformation also spread false information about the war between Israel and Hamas, sharing a post last fall that falsely claimed to show a Palestinian “crisis actor” pretending to be seriously injured.
Since his acquisition of Twitter in 2022, Musk has fueled the rise of these accounts, often commenting on their posts and sharing their content. It also protected their anonymity. In March, X updated its privacy policy to prevent people from revealing the identity of an anonymous user.
Musk also rewards high participation with financial payouts. User For X. X did not respond to a request for comment, which was met with an automated response.
Technology watchdogs said that while it was important to maintain spaces for anonymous voices online, they should not be allowed to spread lies without accountability.
“Companies must vigorously enforce terms of service and content policies that promote election integrity and overall information integrity,” said Kate Rowan, director of the Freedom of Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
The success of these accounts shows how financially savvy users have spread the rules of online trolling to their advantage, said Dale Beran, a lecturer at Morgan State University and author of “It Came From Something Awful: How an Army of Toxic Trolls Accidentally Copied Donald Trump.” To the office.”
“The art of trolling is to make the other person angry,” he said. “And we now know that making someone angry fuels engagement and gets you followers and will pay you money. Now it's kind of a business.”
Some pseudonymous accounts on X have used their brands to build loyal audiences on other platforms, including Instagram, video-sharing platform Rumble, and encrypted messaging platform Telegram. The accounts themselves — and many of their followers — openly tout their pride in America and its founding documents.
It's troubling that so many Americans are putting their trust in these shadowy online sources without thinking critically about who is behind them or how they might want to hurt the country, said Cara Alaimo, a communications professor at Farleigh Dickinson University who has written about toxins on social media. . .
“We know that foreign governments, including China and Russia, are actively creating social media accounts aimed at sowing internal discord because they believe weakening our social fabric gives their countries a competitive advantage,” she said. “And they are right.”
Swenson and Golden write for the Associated Press.
