A New Feature on X Proves How Much of Social Media Is B.S.; So Long, DOGE–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Nov. 25, 2025

Indy Digest: Nov. 25, 2025

I am about to type a sentence that, frankly, I am quite surprised to be typing:

X, aka the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, just introduced a very cool new feature.

Yes, really: X now displays the country where an account is based. Wired magazine explains:

The new location feature on X was first shared last month by X’s head of product Nikita Bier as a way for the company to bring more transparency to a platform which has struggled to deal with bot accounts. “When you read content on X, you should be able to verify its authenticity. This is critical to getting a pulse on important issues happening in the world,” Bier wrote on X in October. “As part of that, we’re experimenting with displaying new information on profiles, including which country an account is based, among other details.”

(An aside: If you hit a paywall while trying to read this article, or even if you don’t, consider subscribing to Wired. If there’s ONE national publication that deserves your money right now, it’s Wired. Their reporting during the second Trump administration has been without parallel.)

Anyway, it turns out this change has CERTAINLY led to some fascinating transparency. Here’s the lede of that aforementioned Wired piece:

A new feature on X has revealed that a number of major MAGA accounts on the platform are operated by people based overseas. And in the days since these accounts were exposed, President Donald Trump has continued boosting several of them.

Many of the accounts, which have large followings and claim to be conservative people based in Texas or “America First” accounts “promoting good resisting evil,” are actually operated everywhere from Chile and Nigeria to Russia and across Eastern Europe.

These accounts largely post about divisive issues, including immigration, gender, and Israel. In one instance, a verified account called MAGA NATION with almost 400,000 followers and the American flag in its screen name was revealed to be operated from a non-EU country in Eastern Europe. Many of the accounts feature the names of members of the Trump family, including an Ivanka Trump news account with over 1 million followers that was based in Nigeria. The account has since been suspended.

On Saturday, Trump shared on Truth Social a screenshot of an X post from an account called “Fan Trump Army.” The account has over 500,000 followers and features an image of Trump as its profile picture. The account operator, according to the new X location feature, is based in India. … In recent days, the account holder changed their bio to read: “An Indian who loves America, President Trump, Musk!” An earlier version of the account’s bio, however, made no mention of the account being run by someone in India.

In a related vein: Several weeks ago, I watched a video on Facebook of the horrible UPS plane crash in Louisville, Ky. This led the Facebook’s algorithm to not-so-accurately decide I liked watching plane crash videos, and the platform started serving me all sorts of them—all of which AI fakes. Some of them were rather convincing.

All of this serves as a valuable reminder of a lesson all of us need to heed: An incredible amount of the stuff—now more than ever before—that you see online is bullshit. Some of this fake stuff is there in an effort to make a profit; some of it is just AI slop; some of it has been concocted by bad actors to stir up dissent and deceive you.

Three words to remember whenever you see something on social media that does not definitively come from a reliable source: 1. Verify. 2. Verify. 3. Verify.

—Jimmy Boegle

Schedule Reminder

Happy Thanksgiving week! This is the only scheduled Indy Digest this week. 11 Days a Week will arrive tomorrow (Wednesday), per usual. The Digest will return to the normal Monday-Thursday schedule next week.

More News

• A headline from our partners at Calmatters: “He built a nursing home empire despite state investigations. Now, lawsuits are piling up.” The lede: “In February 2024, a Los Angeles County jury awarded $2.34 million to an 84-year-old nursing home resident named Betsy Jentz, finding that the facility had violated her rights on 132 occasions, at times leading to serious injuries. Six months later, an Alameda County jury found another facility had violated the rights of 71-year-old James Doherty, Sr. more than 1,400 times. That included seven instances in which staff failed to transport him, causing him to miss chemotherapy treatments, court documents said. Doherty died following the development of a large pressure sore. His family was awarded $7.6 million. In February, a jury in Shasta County is scheduled to hear a case against a nursing home accused of negligence in the 2020 COVID-19 deaths of 24 patients. … All of these facilities have one thing in common: state records list Shlomo Rechnitz as an owner. Court documents show Rechnitz and his companies have denied all allegations in all of the cases. Mark Johnson, an attorney representing Rechnitz’ facilities and one of his main companies, Brius LLC, said in an email that facilities cannot comment on active litigation.” Calmatters reports that the Rechnitz family owns two local facilities: Desert Springs Healthcare and Wellness Centre in Indio, and California Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Palm Springs.

• Here’s yet another barnburner from Wired: ICE is getting ready to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to “bounty hunter” firms to track immigrants. The story says: “Late last month, the Intercept reported that ICE intends to hire bounty hunters and private investigators for street-level verification work. Contractors would confirm home and work addresses for people targeted for removal by—among other techniques—photographing residences, documenting comings and goings, and staking out workplaces and apartment complexes. Those filings cast the initiative as a substantial but limited pilot program. Contractors were guaranteed as little as $250 and could earn no more than $90 million each, with the overall program capped at $180 million. That structure pointed to meaningful scale but still framed the effort as a controlled trial, not an integral component of ICE’s removal operations. Newly released amendments dismantle that structure. ICE has removed the program’s spending cap and replaced it with dramatically higher per-vendor limits. Contractors may now earn up to $281.25 million individually and are guaranteed an initial task order worth at least $7.5 million. The shift signals to ICE’s contracting base that this is no longer an experiment, but an investment, and that the agency expects prime-tier contractors to stand up the staffing, technology, and field operations needed to function as a de facto arm of federal enforcement.“

• Some U.S. Senate Republicans have decided that vehicle safety mandates are a bad thing. The Wall Street Journal reports: “Senate Republicans in January plan to criticize requirements for safety technology, such as automatic emergency braking and alarms to remind drivers that a child is in the back seat, arguing they are ineffective and will unnecessarily drive up the cost of cars, according to people familiar with the situation. They aim to head off future requirements touted by safety advocates and argue instead for advancing autonomous vehicle technology. Chief executives of Detroit’s three automakers and a senior Tesla executive have been summoned to appear at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation—set for Jan. 14—to explain why vehicles have become so expensive. General Motors and Ford Motor are weighing whether to send their CEOs to the hearing, spokespeople said; Jeep-maker Stellantis declined to comment. Sticker shock is hitting car buyers as the U.S. broadly faces what many consider to be a growing affordability crisis. … ‘Americans have been clear that they are hyper-focused on affordability,’ Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), who chairs the committee, said in announcing the hearing.”

• DOGE is no more. Time magazine says: “The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been quietly disbanded with eight months left in its charter, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director. OPM Director Scott Kupor told Reuters that DOGE—the sweeping cost-cutting effort led by billionaire Elon Musk that dominated the first months of President Donald Trump’s second term—‘doesn’t exist,’ adding that most of the office’s functions have been absorbed by OPM, the federal government’s human resources agency. Kupor said that DOGE is no longer the ‘centralized entity’ it once was when Trump appointed Musk to lead the agency in January. Later Sunday, Kupor appeared to take issue with the Reuters story in a social media post, without challenging any of its facts. ‘The truth is: DOGE may not have centralized leadership under the (U.S. DOGE Service.) But, the principles of DOGE remain alive and well: de-regulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; re-shaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first-class citizen,’ Kupor wrote on X.”

• Here’s a smidgeon of good news regarding insurance in the state. From Insurance Journal: “Farmers Insurance announced it will eliminate the cap on the number of homeowners insurance policies it offers in California. The move is part of a new filing, and the cap removal is effective immediately, made in anticipation of an improved homeowners insurance market in California, according to the carrier. Farmers homeowners offerings had been capped at 9,500 new policies per month. The filing requests a 6.99% average statewide rate increase. Farmers says the improved conditions are due to the adoption of the state’s Sustainable Insurance Strategy, pushed by California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara. This cap removal includes homeowners, condominium and renters policies.”

• An update: The Coast Guard has backtracked on plans to loosen restrictions on hate-symbol displays. The Associated Press, via PBS, reports: “The U.S. Coast Guard has released a new, firmer policy addressing the display of hate symbols like swastikas and nooses just hours after it was publicly revealed that it made plans to describe them as ‘potentially divisive’—a term that prompted outcry from lawmakers and advocates. ‘Divisive or hate symbols and flags are prohibited,’ the latest Coast Guard policy, released late Thursday, declared before adding that this category included ‘a noose, a swastika, and any symbols or flags co-opted or adopted by hate-based groups.’ ‘This is not an updated policy but a new policy to combat any misinformation and double down that the U.S. Coast Guard forbids these symbols,’ an accompanying Coast Guard press release said. … The earlier version stopped short of banning the symbols, instead saying that commanders could take steps to remove them from public view and that the rule did not apply to private spaces outside of public view, such as family housing.”

• And finally … when you see a headline like “Sales of AI-enabled teddy bear suspended after it gave advice on BDSM sex and where to find knives,” you MUST click on it, right? From CNN: “A stuffed teddy with a speaker inside, which was sold on the company’s website for $99, ‘Kumma’ integrates OpenAI’s GPT-4o chatbot. ‘Kumma, our adorable bear, combines advanced artificial intelligence with friendly, interactive features, making it the perfect friend for both kids and adults,’ the FoloToy website reads. … The PIRG report, published on November 13, found that the bear had poor safeguards for inappropriate content. In one interaction with the researchers it suggested where to find knives in the home, and in others it was happy to discuss sexually explicit themes. ‘We were surprised to find how quickly Kumma would take a single sexual topic we introduced into the conversation and run with it, simultaneously escalating in graphic detail while introducing new sexual concepts of its own,’ the report said.”

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