A MAGA bot network on X is divided over the Trump-Epstein backlash [View all]

Source: NBC News

July 20, 2025, 7:15 AM EDT


A previously unreported network of hundreds of accounts on X is using artificial intelligence to automatically reply to conservatives with positive messages about people in the Trump administration, researchers say. But with the MAGA movement split over the administration’s handling of files involving deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the accounts’ messaging has broken, offering contradictory statements on the issue and revealing the LLM-fueled nature of the accounts.

The network, tracked for NBC News by both the social media analytics company Alethea and researchers at Clemson University, consists of more than 400 identified bot accounts, though the number could be far larger, the researchers say. Its accounts offer consistent praise for key Trump figures, particularly support for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

As often is the case with bot accounts, those viewed by NBC News tended to have only a few dozen followers, and their posts rarely get many views. But a large audience does not appear to be the point. Their effectiveness, if they have any, is in the hope that they contribute to a partisan echo chamber, and that en masse they can “massage perceptions,” said Darren Linvill, the director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, which studies online disinformation campaigns.

“They’re not really there to get engagement. They’re there to just be occasionally seen in those replies,” Linvill told NBC News. The researchers declined to share specifics on how they identified the accounts, but noted they shared a number of distinct trends. All were created, seemingly in batches, around three specific days last year

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/maga-ai-bot-network-divided-trump-epstein-backlash-rcna219167