A large number of MAGA social media influencers were exposed over the weekend as being being based in other countries.Podcaster Matt Binder posted screenshots showing that Charlie’s Voice Rising, a popular Charlie Kirk fan account, is based in Eastern Europe (non-EU).One popular influencer wrote "wa...
As in, could they be using VPNs so they appear to be from outside the US, but actually aren’t?
… I mean I guess? But that seems like an expensive way to make yourself less credible.
Yes that’s what I meant. I’m not saying that’s the case but it’s a possibility.
If I were spreading hate online I would want to hide my location but who knows if they’d think the same way.
But why use a VPN to appear from outside the country? Why not just use a VPN node within the US, so it’s not obviously russian but still obscures your location? For that matter MAGA, who they’re supporting, currently is in power and in the US there’s nothing illegal about posting vile political rhetoric online. So there’s no reason to not simply make up usernames and create a bunch of twitter accounts. You’d save a great deal of money and make yourself appear a great deal more credible if you just made yourself appear as though you were in the US, not in countries known for having whole industries centered around online astroturfing services.
Fair point but you could also ask why someone foreign wouldn’t use a VPN to appear from inside the country.
I can think of a reason why you would want to hide your location even if you were in the US, the government in control now may not be in control forever and maybe the new gov will hold you accountable.
Hold you accountable for what? Nothing being done here is remotely illegal. I shill hard for my political beliefs and Warl0k3 isn’t my real name, how is what they’re doing (if they were really from the US) any different?
As for a foreign group using VPNs, why bother? This information hasn’t ever been reported before, and any investigation into it is both unlikely under the current administration and has the resources to blow thru any cheap VPN you might be using for large scale commerical work like this. And even if that happens, nothing will happen to you. So why spend the money?
I don’t care to join in on the rest of this discussion but:
The definition of “illegal” could change in a future government. This is one of the strongest arguments for internet privacy in general: what is legal today may be “illegal” tomorrow or even “legal but the government doesn’t care about the law”
For whatever they want, it’s just an example of being paranoid and a reason to want to hide your location. Another being your work finding out you’re being an asshole online and then being fired for it, etc.
For the foreign group, to seem more credible by appearing to be from the target country.
I’m not arguing that these counter-points I’m suggesting are strong, just that it’s possible however unlikely they may be.
It’s also possible that this is all being orchestrated by the lizard cabal (prove me wrong, I dare you) but hopefully we can agree that our time is going to be much better spent discussing things that are actually likely instead of what the lizard pope might be planning next.
I can’t tell if you think I’m a troll or not but that’s why I genuinely asked the question, VPN usage today seems very common so it seems actually likely.
No the troll kingdom has been at war with the lizard cabal for centuries, I’m very careful to never confuse the two groups.
Seriously though I don’t think you’re trolling, I just think this question is kinda dumb. While there are reasons to use a VPN yes, you have yet to present a reason for why a huge number of legit US-based maga-influencer VPN users would want to set their location to something other than the US instead of just using a US node, which would be both faster and less suspicious.
It’s just silly to think they’d be doing that, there legitimately isn’t a reason to pay money to do a less convincing job (unless this is a false flag)
If it rises to the level of defamation or libel it’s illegal. Like Candace and her claim that Macron’s wife is trans.
And so is tweeting about a fire while in a crowded theater, but defamation/libel are famously hard to even show standing for, let alone prosecute. And they (oversimplifying) generally do not apply to speech critical of a public figure, which is why we can say things like “Stephen miller is a collective of sentient bugs stuffed into a skin suit made from stitched-together horse foreskins that’s embezzling millions of dollars that he then spends on underage sheep and recreational bidets” without worrying about legal repercussions.
That would make sense if location was always visible. But it wasn’t.
It depends if they had any forethought about it. Just because it isn’t visible doesn’t mean it isn’t tracked and could possibly come out later like this scenario or some data breach.
Expensive ? What are you spending for a vpn?
Anything is expensive if it’s unnecessary. You’d be surprised how many people won’t even pay me a nickle to cast a spell to protect them from the ghosts of ants they’ve stepped on.
Commercial VPN services aren’t particularly cheap.