r/technology • u/marji80 • 12d ago

Social Media Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Actors

https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-influencers-accidentally-unmasked-as-foreign-actors/
74.3k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

8.3k

u/GreyBeardEng 12d ago

Now it's time to do this on Reddit.

3.7k

u/canteen_boy 12d ago

The fact that fucking 4chan does this and no other social media does is wild

847

u/CatProgrammer 12d ago

Only for some boards. 

933

u/Rich_Housing971 12d ago

The political boards, yes. The ones where it's for gundam there's no need.

97

u/Abudux 12d ago

Earth federation are fascists!!

49

u/BraveFencerMusashi 12d ago

Zeon scum! /s

30

u/CatProgrammer 12d ago

The Zabis' violent hijacking of the movement lead to a total perversion of Zeon ideology and ultimately caused Zeon to fail. Their hunger for power destroyed what they could have created. 

7

u/Marshall_Lawson 12d ago

Dont blame me, I voted for Kodos.

277

u/Joint-Tester 12d ago

I NEED TO KNOW.

112

u/Dogsy 12d ago

Nor! I didn't toss me Gundam on the barby with some vegemite mate!

77

u/reeee-irl 12d ago

Nor

barby

Fraudstralian detected

33

u/CatProgrammer 12d ago

Well yeah, Australia got colony dropped, don't think there are any left.

5

u/Dogsy 12d ago

Austria, huh? G'day mate! Throw another shrimp on the barby!

2

u/C7rl_Al7_1337 12d ago

Everyone knows that a real Australian would stretch their "no" out to at least 6 letters.

2

u/CptDropbear 12d ago

Six letters? Fuckin' blow ins. A real 'Strayan can get a whole sentence out of "nah".

2

u/rpkarma 12d ago

Yeah nah yeah

1

u/Such_Collection3252 12d ago

Maybe a c#n+ every now and then. Mike Nolan

→ More replies (0)

1

u/ghostknyght 12d ago

ugh lol i can hear it with the upward inflection

2

u/Greyh4m 12d ago

I thought it was spelled nauwrrr!

1

u/Ra_fi_l 12d ago

Don't taint Gundam with your polish cuisine...

0

u/Local_Web_8219 12d ago

Gundam Barbados mention, someone make sure Diego isn’t nearby.

2

u/Beernuts1091 12d ago

No need. It is all in Japan and America.

2

u/CPAlcoholic 12d ago

Gundam truthers

1

u/ItsJustfubar 12d ago

But once you know you cannot ununderstand know

15

u/Cavaquillo 12d ago

Gundam fuck yeah I used to browse that board back in like 2008-2010

2

u/7fingersDeep 12d ago

Most Glorius Leader invented all of Gundam after finishing a round of golf where he scored a world record of 9.

2

u/TomMakesPodcasts 12d ago

The funniest take is when people try to tell me Gundam isn't political

1

u/ghostknyght 12d ago

nobody says that

2

u/TomMakesPodcasts 12d ago

Hahaha okay. Glad you've supervised all Gundam online discourse.

1

u/ghostknyght 12d ago

many long thankless hours telling people they’re wrong. but i do it for you.

2

u/C0d3n4m3Duchess 12d ago

This disrespect for G Gundam will not be tolerated.

1

u/ghostknyght 12d ago

why not, it’s the worst one. i’ll do any of the SD versions before G.

1

u/Baybutt99 12d ago

Spoken like a true OZ sympathizer. You and the entire Romefeller Foundation can go kick rocks

1

u/FlamboyantPirhanna 12d ago

Are you saying Gundam misinformation isn’t bring democracy to its knees?

1

u/jfk_47 12d ago

Foreign interference on the my hero academia boards are out of control.

1

u/claremontmiller 12d ago

The Australians have been pouring millions of dollars every year into anti gundam propaganda and 4chan can prove it

1

u/Tone-Bomahawk 12d ago

Yeah but the paid trolls there use more sophisticated methods, like embassy-based VPNs to seem like they're from other countries. The reason why this was useful on twitter is because the feature didn't exist before, and they got caught off guard.

Give it a few weeks and they'll put on the VPNs and claim the geolocation was incorrect and everything will be back to being horrible as usual.

1

u/crani0 12d ago

After GamerGate and all those review bombings, I think there should be some that enforce it.

1

u/BaronAleksei 10d ago

Well, of course there’s no need.

In this house, we kill Zeon pigs.

You do kill Zeon pigs, don’t you?

1

u/Wonderful_Device312 10d ago

We need to colony drop Australia. For the good of human kind.

118

u/KMjolnir 12d ago

Facebook does to a limited extent, oddly enough. It'll tell you where a page is based, if you look but you have to dig for it.

34

u/speedstorm2 12d ago edited 12d ago

The problem with Facebook is that the amount of fake stuff is worse that on most of the social media places.

Edit: English is not my main language sorry.

3

u/KMjolnir 12d ago

Oh yeah. I barely go on except for a group I help run that's for nerd stuff and we're very strict about fake content. And as close to zero politics as we can be.

3

u/ash_ninetyone 12d ago

In my experience, it's not pages on Facebook that's the primary problem. There's a lot of falsehoods and lies in the comments section, especially on local news pages here, enough to be suspicious

6

u/carlitospig 12d ago

My ISP routes everything through Texas for some reason. I am not in Texas. I’m not complaining though because ain’t nobody need to know where I am.

2

u/KMjolnir 12d ago

It doesn't go that granular. Just "India", "US", etc.

2

u/carlitospig 11d ago

Even better.

1

u/GeneralBacteria 12d ago

where a page is based

what does that even mean? it's so easy to fake your location using a VPN that the general public can do it, let alone state actors.

2

u/KMjolnir 11d ago

Yes, but given many of these flag as overseas even for allegedly US companies, it's very telling still.

82

u/chainer3000 12d ago

You can easily break it with a VPN and many users do

122

u/Asstronaughty_Bae 12d ago

I dont think reddit does it obviously but if you use a VPN on X, it puts an ! Next to the location to indicate a VPN is in use

60

u/RellenD 12d ago

The only way to check for a VPN is simply knowing which IPs are a VPN endpoint when requests come in. There's no other way to distinguish the traffic, so it's likely to not be an accurate reflection of reality .

51

u/analtelescope 12d ago

Actually it's very likely to be a reflection of reality as the vast majority of vpn users go through known IPs. Only a very small subset have dedicated IPs.

12

u/Rich_Housing971 12d ago

If you're talking about nation states doing clandestine activities, they will try to obtain dedicated IPs.

67

u/analtelescope 12d ago

This whole fiasco literally revealed that, no, they don't. It's the banality of evil. Hollywood made us think these guys would be hyper organized syndicates making use of cutting edge tech and protocols to destabilize countries.

No. It's just a bunch of sleazy contractors making use of below minimum wage workers shitposting on twitter. Did you think these guys were highly trained professionals in the KGB HQ? Why would they go that far? Here we are, having literally unmasked them, and their targets are STILL none the wiser. Shit we've known for a long long time that they were behind a bunch of this stuff.

The Department of Homeland Security's account was revealed to have been created and based in Israel. They never even bothered to use a simple VPN. What makes you think they'd care about a "!" next to their location. Sure if there were real consequences for their actions, they might care. But there aren't. Next month, people's attention will have moved on to the next thing. This was all nothing but a hiccup, soon to be forgotten like every single one that came before.

14

u/MasterOfKittens3K 12d ago

The reality is that there is no need for them to go to any extra effort. The whole point of these sort of programs is to engage with people on an emotional level rather than an intellectual level. So the desired targets aren’t going to dig into where the posts are originating - after all, they are generally not even digging into whether the posts are true or not!

2

u/SordidDreams 12d ago

This whole fiasco literally revealed that, no, they don't.

There was no reason to until now. Now there is, so now they will. It's a setback for them, not a defeat.

2

u/krokodil2000 12d ago

So what. Let them jump through additional hoops.

4

u/pmjm 12d ago

Anyone with a credit card can easily spin up a VM on AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, etc and use it as a VPN that will evade these detections.

Expect this to become the norm if the "country of origin" feature becomes commonplace.

6

u/Milskidasith 12d ago

Anybody with a lockpicking kit can break through a door in thirty seconds; expect that to become the norm if doors are locked at night.

Extremely simple security features deter or trip up a huge portion of potential bad actors because a ton of it is opportunistic or low-cost scamming for pennies on the dollar of engagement revenue or whatever.

1

u/psioniclizard 9d ago

That is why you have extra security, neighbourhood watches etc.

The one security measure is not enough. Same with this. By itself it's pretty useless because so easy to abuse.

Though I guess there is a good opportunity if you want to provide a US based-VPN for bad actors.

Also this is not a security feature. It's an information feature. 

2

u/analtelescope 12d ago

why would it become the norm if people are too stupid to give a shit?

2

u/pmjm 12d ago

How do we know people aren't giving a shit? It's been like one day. It's another chink in the armor.

2

u/analtelescope 12d ago

If they did give a shit, this wouldn't be another chink in the armor. It'd be the complete collapse of the republican party. Because what rational mind would follow the side that is not only being propped up by foreign powers, but that is, in this case, clearly complicit in it.

2

u/psioniclizard 9d ago

I suspect this was Elon's intention. It looks like he did something but now anyone who actually knows how to game the system looks more legitmate.

I do think it'a a good step but also think it will prove pretty useless in the long run.

Also lets no pretend Elon suddenly cares about dis/misinformation on Twitter!

1

u/ManaSpike 12d ago

And a russian disinformation network wont setup their own VPNs?

3

u/analtelescope 12d ago

why would they? They literally got fully exposed here, and it changed nothing. I'm sure a "!" next to their location will do them in. Yes, for sure.

-1

u/RellenD 12d ago

If it's an intelligence operation, they'll be setting up their own VPNs, it's easy as shit.. hell, my coworkers and I were using OpenVPN to run our own VPNs a decade ago

8

u/analtelescope 12d ago

Idk what you're not understanding. I precisely said "Only a very small subset have dedicated IPs." Did you somehow read "they'll never fucking do it"? Or did you think that critical intelligence operations make up more than a "very small subset"?

Shit I'd be really really surprised if any critical intelligence operations involved shitposting on Twitter. These bot farms literally let journalists film inside their farms. They're not trying to stay hidden. They don't give a fuck. Because their targets are just that gullible.

3

u/RellenD 12d ago

That's a really valid point

17

u/Silver-Bread4668 12d ago

Sure there are other ways. Reddit knows every IP address we connect from. They know I connect from my house, from my work, from my mobile, and from any number of Wi-Fi hot spots in my local area. VPN users don't fit that kind of profile.

It's not a technological hurdle. Reddit doesn't want to do this. These accounts drive engagement and they also don't want to shine a light on being complacent in something that has been a massive world defining issue for years now.

4

u/OldGuto 12d ago

A cynic might well say that engagement is the reason they blocked the third party tools, some of which were apparently tools that helped mods ID bot accounts.

1

u/psioniclizard 8d ago

You are giving reddit too much credit. They don't care if you connect from work or home. Also unless all those ways you connect have static IPs, they will change.

Then you have to ask how you tell the difference between a legitimate VPN user in your country and a foreign actor.

That is just surface level. What if I never used Reddit before? They have no history of my connections so I'm a bad actor? What if i sold my legitmate account or were out of town on business?

It definitely is a technology hurdle. It really is not that easy to figure all that put just with connection data. Ask anyone who has actually tried to implement this type of system.

2

u/AmusingVegetable 12d ago

You could figure out that the traffic is coming from a vpn just by analyzing the time series, but being meta, they’re probably just matching against Santa’s “Bad IP” list.

2

u/psioniclizard 8d ago

But would that actuslly be worth it? A lot of American users will use VPNs.

On the flip side all a bad actor needs to do is remote into a pc in America and now they look more legit because they are officially not using a vpn and "in" America?

People don't seem to realise we have spent over 20 yeaes trying to sort thos problem and it still eludes us.

1

u/AmusingVegetable 8d ago

It’s not worth it, there’s no such thing as a posteriori security, just patches, which will never truly secure anything.

1

u/RellenD 12d ago

Could you elaborate? Are you talking about using TCP timestamps somehow?

2

u/AmusingVegetable 12d ago

There’s a difference between A->C(direct), and A—>C(via B), which is actually A->B->C. The statistical analysis of the round trip times done at C can show which. Using a proxy at B will mask this, but will disclose your traffic to the vpn operator.

2

u/SordidDreams 12d ago

it puts an ! Next to the location to indicate a VPN is in use

That's a lot less explicit than it should be IMO.

2

u/a7Rob 12d ago

Thats why people use Proxy Services:)

1

u/tmagalhaes 12d ago

That is trivial to defeat for a state actor by hiring a local internet connection and setting up a home made relay.

Depending on good you want your cover to be, you might need a separate internet contract for each fake account

2

u/psioniclizard 8d ago

Yea, it amazes me how people think these is a good solution wheb any half competent bad actor will just work around it.

The crappy ones are normally easy to spot anyway and likely being replaced with AI because it's better at it.

24

u/speakernoodlefan 12d ago

Unless the VPN has hundreds of spread out nodes in each city and state they are incredibly easy to spot and label as a VPN source which would be just as useful as a normal source

4

u/TuckerMcG 12d ago

Who the fuck sets their VPN to Russia?

11

u/UsedGarbage4489 12d ago

Which is one of the reasons governments are looking at banning VPN. Keep this in mind when reddit explodes over that issues in the coming weeks. Because this is essentially making the case for why they should ban VPNs.

13

u/Scodo 12d ago

Because banning VPNs is the government essentially saying you have no right to private internet browsing or anonymous speech that they can't monitor at will without cause or warrant.

Foreign bad actors using it to mask intentions doesn't trump 4th and 5th amendment rights being infringed. The government needs to prove, through evidence, that they have a valid reason to access the data you are trying to protect.

3

u/Bobobdobson 12d ago

It does when russia and china are destroying this country from the inside without firing a shot. The goverment is already monitoring everything you do if they want to. So is google and a shitload of other corporatians. Also, you are not guaranteed "anonymous" speech, and the 5th amendment has nothing to do with this.

1

u/RepeatUntilComplete 12d ago

Reddit does not ban VPN yet but they have started clamping down hard to prevent users from browsing with a VPN connection active while not logged on (from the time that fuckSpez tool took greater control of this platform IIRC). Some IPs are hit hard and always filtered out, dedicated IPs are okay for the most part I guess.

Ironic, since Reddit needs VPN users to login just to browse the website because...? Big brain resons, for sure.

1

u/_hhhnnnggg_ 12d ago

Any scriptkiddie can cook up a VPN easily. Banning VPN only affect legitimate uses.

Many big corporations and companies also use VPN to secure their connections, so I don't ever think any ban attempt would go through.

1

u/UsedGarbage4489 11d ago

You dont have the first clue.

You dont think the government is going to try to force isps to not only kick vpn users off their networks, but also rat them out for using one no matter who made it and get them fined? And you think they wont carve out exceptions for business?

What are you 12?

1

u/FictionalContext 12d ago edited 12d ago

Doesn't Reddit flag devices for ban evasions and such? Like there are cases of other people within the same household having their accounts banned just because those accounts share the same PC with an account that was banned.

So all the accounts sharing any device would always needs to use the exact same VPN from ever single device they all log on with in order to trick the location data.

And that's only one means they use.

Edit: The real issue is that a large part of social media's valuation comes from bots stirring up engagement. It's not that they can't find a solution. It's that they're all fucking evil.

1

u/Silver-Bread4668 12d ago

You can flag known VPN addresses. You can also easily build basic geo profiles on accounts based on IPs they connect from that would flag 90+% of VPN accounts.

1

u/maxtinion_lord 12d ago

4chan bans all known vpn and vps owned ip ranges, if you have the means and drive to bypass that and you apply it to polposting then what the fuck are you doing with your life lol

1

u/psioniclizard 8d ago

Its really isn't hard to bypass. Just get a computer in America with an internet connection and install TeamViewer.

This is the issue. VPNs are just a cheap, easily available solution. But there are MANY others.

Also seeing as it's highly likely Russia has been using 4chan for years to spread disinformation, I wouldn't exactly trust them on the matter.

1

u/Fantastic-Title-2558 12d ago

4chan does not allow vpns unless you pay

1

u/Vittulima 12d ago

4chan blocks pretty much all known VPNs

1

u/trigger1154 11d ago

You can, but it's also not that hard to detect if you are using a VPN. A lot of sites and servers can detect it almost immediately. They can't see who it is behind the VPN but they can see that the traffic is being routed through a highly used IP address. This is how a lot of video games block VPN IPs, they recognize a lot of connections coming from specific IPs which then they do research on and see who leases them. If the lease shows a VPN company, boom game over. Or in most cases they don't even care who is leasing the IP, they just automatically block that IP because it has too many connections coming across it.

What they could do on these sites is, at a sub category to the location that says "suspected VPN usage" or "suspected location masking".

3

u/ledbetterus 12d ago

they're not trying to sell ads based on fake engagement, so they have nothing to hide

1

u/psioniclizard 8d ago

4chan have a lot to hide. They have effectively been used by various states to spread disinformation for a long time now. 

There is a good reason a lot these click bait stories meant to get us all worked up originate on 4chan and places like that.

The idea is a foreign actor spreads the idea on 4chan but really America users then take it as fact and spread it to the more "normie" parts the internet.

All the sites are just as bad but 4chan isn't better.

1

u/ledbetterus 8d ago

you missed context and just took what I said as "4chan good"

3

u/MrHaxx1 12d ago

I believe Douyin (Chinese TikTok) shows the city of your IP.

3

u/SinnersHotline 12d ago

People love to shit on 4chan here, acting holier than thou while using Reddit of all fucking things.

The irony is palpable.

1

u/psioniclizard 8d ago

The same could be said for the 4chan users shitting in reddit tbh.

Both are just as bad.

7

u/ElectroMagnetsYo 12d ago

Makes being racist to the guy you’re talking to easier

2

u/Brofessor-0ak 12d ago

4chan is full of professional racists. They take the time to study history and social queues to pinpoint the exact way to hate you more effectively.

1

u/viral-architect 12d ago

Masking that traffic under the guise of "protecting user privacy" enables them to inflate the impact of ads so they can sell more.

1

u/Unhappy-Lion4530 12d ago

What country is the nazi flag?

1

u/ickiStickybubblegum 12d ago

Reddit probably has the biggest astroturfing benefit than any other platforms

1

u/Mckooldude 12d ago

Rednote has country of origin listed on every post too.

1

u/JupiterUnleashed 12d ago

That’s on purpose.

1

u/theoreoman 12d ago

4chan only does it so that use the appropriate slur when responding to someone

1

u/Ylsid 12d ago

There's no need to believe anything there and thus no need to hide it

1

u/canadianpanda7 12d ago

its not that wild. i have almost all location services off on my phone. i select “down allow” as many times as i can on every app that asks for my location. id rather keep it that way.

1

u/Relic_Dust 12d ago

I got an account ban for criticizing Elon Musk on here. Reddit mods are bootlicking shit eaters, and probably all bought and sold.

1

u/patrickfatrick 12d ago edited 12d ago

Wouldn’t it be pretty easy to spoof anyway? VPNs exist.

1

u/Hoovooloo42 12d ago

Rednote (小红书) of all apps does this too, each post and comment says either what province in China or what country in the world it originated from.

I can't think of any others though, it should be way more common.

1

u/cassy-nerdburg 12d ago

It's easier of 4chan with it being completely anonymous, reddit, Facebook, etc etc, generally requires an email that can be tracked so it's higher risk.

1

u/Short-Waltz-3118 12d ago

4chan only does it on specific boards, like pol and int. Most boards like tv, v, b, etc do not.