Around November 22, strange things started happening on X. It was as if a match-the-following question in an examination had gone awfully wrong.

Indian-sounding activist and journalist handles like ‘Diya Sharma’ and ‘Yashita Nagpal’ were outed as Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Anti-Hindu or caste-divisive handles were traced to countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Malaysia.

In the US, for instance, the trail of pro-MAGA accounts posing as American patriots like @MAGANationX (with 390,000 followers), @_MAGAScope (51,000 followers), and @America_First0 (67,000 followers) led to eastern Europe, Thailand, Nigeria, or Bangladesh.

X had rolled out its ‘About This Account’ feature globally as part of a transparency push to fight misinformation, fake news, and transnational campaigns with hidden agenda. The update........

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