[throwaway91827]

How do you square your directive that leaders use X as a way to get an option poll or pulse of a nation with phenomena like this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/23/rightwing-in...

where a huge amount of influential accounts posing as American patriots were actually essentially content-farmers from the global south?

For my 2 cents, I consider X in 2025 (which is very different from Twitter in 2011!) to be basically an anonymous imageboard like 4Chan, mostly full of straight-up noise and largely decoupled from reality, with the only reliable signal being a bias towards information that is personally flattering or aligned with Elon Musk.

I don't know that I'd ever seriously listen to a place like 4Chan for guidance about how to tie my own shoes, much less how to govern an entire nation.

[qcnguy]

You would notice that X responded to concerns over such accounts directly, without being forced to do anything by the EU and in a much more sensible way than what the EU is demanding.

[jack_tripper]

>influential accounts posing as American patriots were actually essentially content-farmers from the global south?

Which is why I'd like a button that allows me to geofence the global south from posting on my social media feeds. Their opinions are irrelevant anyway to the political issues happening in my EU country since they're not citizens and can't vote in the elections here, so there's no loss there, same how I'm not gonna go on Indian social media boards and lecture them about how to solve the conflict with Pakistan because it doesn't concern me.

Like for example a popular blogger from my country solved this issue by paywalling his blog behind a 5 Euro monthly Patreon fee. Suddenly, no more bots, trolls, low quality rage baiters and Asian scammers. Gatekeeping is important if you want to maintain quality and don't have massive resources for moderation.

Also this isn't anything new. Spying, botting and farming on the internet aka information warfare in general, has been happening for 50+ years now. We're now just more aware of it because now "others" are doing it to "us", when in the past it was mostly "we" who were doing it to "them".

>I don't know that I'd ever seriously listen to a place like 4Chan for guidance about how to tie my own shoes, much less how to govern an entire nation.

[...]mostly full of straight-up noise and largely decoupled from reality

If it's so decoupled from reality, then how come both X and 4Chan were bang on about how Trump was gonna win the US presidential election both times, despite mainstream media telling otherwise from their "polls" as sources?

You can chose not to listen to X and 4Chan the same way how you can choose to piss against the wind, but then don't be surprised you end up getting wet and covered in piss.

[throwaway91827]

So I should listen to 4Chan but not Pakistanis?

[jack_tripper]

Is 4Chan popular with Pakistani scammers?

I think mostly Meta's and X's platforms have the big issue with asian posters masquerading as westerners, since they get paid for the engagement rage-bait they generate there, but 4Chat doesn't pay you, so they have no incentive to spend their time commenting there when they can farm on X for cash. 4Chan is mostly infested by glowies though, both US and Israeli.