Amid ongoing controversy over X’s new “About this account” info panel, which has revealed that some of the most followed accounts that post about American politics are actually not based in the U.S., X has clarified some further details about the new display, and why the location info displayed may not yet be 100% correct. At least not yet.
Over the weekend, X switched on its new “About this account” info panels, which are accessible to anyone who visits a public X profile, and show when an account joined the platform, where the user is based, how many times the profile has changed its username and how the profile was created.
The idea is that this will provide more transparency, and enable users to more easily identify bot and spam accounts, or foreign-based agitators that may be seeking to interfere in another region’s political systems.
And that it has, with some big right-wing accounts immediately revealed to be based in nations other than the U.S., re-igniting debate around foreign influence operations in the app.
Though, really, as I noted yesterday, that’s not a huge surprise, as various reports have highlighted the fact that foreign operatives use X to comment on U.S. politics, often under the guise of local users.
What is relevant here is the scale of that influence, and what that could mean for broader discussion trends in the app. And when you also consider that X is still a key news source for many Americans, you can see how this type of influence, at these levels, could be problematic, and may be skewing voter behavior.
Though X has clarified that not all is as it seems with these initial location indicators.
X’s Head of Product Nikita Bier says that the location displayed is currently not accurate for all profiles, due to errors in the way that X has logged location info. X used an older database process to estimate location, and that system has proven inaccurate, which X is now working to fix.
Bier also notes that the account creation country is also incorrect on a subset of old accounts, particularly for those who created an account using a VPN or via certain devices that were routed through another region’s servers. Bier says that the errors will be rectified this week.
It's also rolling out indicators of VPN usage on profiles:
Bier also says that X will not display the location on any “gray check” government accounts, in order, Bier says, to “prevent acts of terrorism against government leaders.”
So that rumor going around that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security account is being run out of Israel, yeah, that’s not true, as X never displayed the location info on the official DHS account.
X has also added a new explainer to its Help section on how users choose which region info they display:
“About this Account is part of your account profile which is publicly available if your account is set to public. X infers this information based on your aggregated IP addresses. You can choose to show the region or country your account is based in by clicking the ‘joined’ date in your profile and selecting the settings gear icon.”
So you can choose to display a general region for your location, or the specific nation, if you choose (you can’t, however, switch off the location feature entirely).
So, not an ideal rollout for X, from a PR perspective, but the feature is actually performing as intended, helping X users understand where an account is posting from, in order to provide more context about their potential motivations for commenting on certain issues.
That should help to improve transparency, and reduce the influence of foreign operations in the app, while the early controversy could help to make users more aware of this option moving forward.
So bad press for X, but good for helping to get the word out, which could have ongoing benefits.
