What X's new country 'based in' feature tells us about fake accounts

Your suspicions about the user you're arguing with on Elon Musk's X being a fake might just be true.

That's an experience that many users on X, formerly Twitter, are sharing since the platform's new "About this account" page went live with its "Account based in" feature. Basically, each X profile now discloses the country of origin a user is posting from. 

The feature, which X head of product Nikita Bier first teased last month, was originally rolled out on Friday night. Hours later, X removed the feature with Bier claiming there were some changes that needed to be made to address users that utilized VPNs to hide their location. However, by Saturday night, X had once again made the country of origin feature live for each account.

There are ways to obscure your location in X's settings. Users can choose to only show a general region like North America or Europe instead of the specific nation like the United States or Germany. While this might protect users who are afraid of being doxxed or need to be more private living under an oppressive regime of a more authoritarian country, these settings don't really affect how fake accounts are revealed.

For example, X users discovered that the account @American, complete with a U.S. flag and bald eagle in their avatar, was not in fact a user from the United States but someone posting from "South Asia."

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Another account called "Mariana Times" presented themselves as a U.S. citizen who spoke out about wanting to deport New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani because "we want a nation" and not "foreigner" who has not "assimilated into American culture." While their avatar had an Israeli flag with an AI-looking woman standing in front of it, X's new feature revealed that Mariana is actually posting from India.

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Many social media users have long wondered if foreign actors have been behind prominent anonymous political accounts that use the platform to sow discord or even just make easy money through monetization schemes. It's unclear just how large the scale is, but X's new location feature certainly confirmed the suspicion that this is happening.

In addition, it shows that Elon Musk's goal to "defeat the bots" on X has largely been a failure. In fact, studies have shown that the bot and fake account problem on X has been even worse since Musk took over and made changes to the platform that made it easier for these type of fake accounts to prevail.

However, with X's latest change, spearheaded by the newly-hired Bier, at least users will now get a good idea if they are arguing with one of these fake accounts. And more transparency is always a good thing.

So, that "Make America Great Again" themed account that you've been duking it out with online for years? You may just now find out that the user claiming to be from the U.S. is actually from Russia, Nigeria, India, or elsewhere.

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