What if all that hate is just a few angry people with keyboards?
At the New York Post, law prof Glenn Reynolds discusses a policy change at X that revealed a fact that many suspected but could not prove. Many loud voices poisoning public discussion are not the people they claim to be.
When their identities were unmasked, users could see where they were posting from:
Like the one that posted: “Trump is Israel First. I’m done with MAGA. I hope Republicans lose.”
Americans turning on Trump over Israel?
New X location tool exposes fake Gaza accounts taking advantage of war by seeking donations Nope. The account was based in Turkey.
Likewise the woke-right “groyper” movement supposedly elevating white supremacist Nick Fuentes seems to be largely a foreign sham, and “Ron Smith, MAGA Hunter,” a prolific anti-Trump poster with a substantial following, turns out to be from Kenya.
Many users billing themselves as “Native American” with accounts specializing in divisive racial attacks on white people are actually foreign, and mostly from Bangladesh.
“Elon Musk’s zeal for truth reveals the online frauds aiming to divide us,” November 24, 2025
No doubt deception is roiling public discussion in many places. Setting up a social media account is much cheaper and easier than most forms of deception, especially when the deceiver could rely on true identities remaining hidden.
Reynolds adds, “Causes that are not actually popular can be made to look like they have genuine momentum behind them, even if that “momentum” is just a few nerds pecking keyboards in Third World countries.”
Image Credit: Farhan - How else we might counter this
One private way of blunting the impact is checking social media against real world experience. For example, suppose we hear that there is a growing movement in the community against some group or religion. We might want to ask ourselves, “Did I hear this from anyone I actually know or can identify?” If not, consider the possibility that it is all run by a clever nerd an ocean away, who depends on social media addicts not talking to each other any more.
Reynolds sees a bigger lesson as well:
We’ve heard a lot in recent years about “misinformation” and “disinformation” on the Internet, which officials in both the United States and the increasingly totalitarian European Union have used as an excuse to censor ideas they don’t like. Inevitably, the ideas they dislike are those coming from their political opponents.
But Musk on Friday didn’t censor people for lying. He revealed them as liars.
Rather than repression, he chose illumination. “Aiming to divide us”
Going forward, that’s a much better way.
