Earlier this month, X rolled out a new feature – About This Account – in a bid to expand account transparency on its social media platform. While a sound principle on paper, this triggered a wave of confusion over the weekend after users discovered the platform was displaying locations for profiles that often engage in US political debates. The feature, which appears when clicking an account’s join date, began showing the country or region where an account is based – an abrupt addition that quickly became the focus of partisan battles on the platform.
Early findings spread at speed. Dozens of high-engagement pro-Trump and “America First” accounts, many presenting themselves as US-based, were shown as operating from Eastern Europe, South Asia, Nigeria and Thailand. Screenshots circulated across X throughout Friday, prompting users to catalog accounts that regularly participate in US political arguments but appear to originate overseas. Among the accounts flagged were profiles using patriotic branding, including one named “ULTRAMAGA 🇺🇸 TRUMP🇺🇸2028,” listed as being located in Africa, and another with a bald eagle avatar, @American, shown as operating from South Asia.
The debate increased when images claiming the US Department of Homeland Security’s official account was labeled as based in Israel went viral. DHS issued a denial, saying the account “has only ever been run and operated from the United States.” X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, dismissed the images as manipulated and said the tool had been temporarily disabled because historical IP data for a subset of older accounts was inaccurate. Independent verification of the alleged DHS location label has been limited, as the feature briefly disappeared before reporters could confirm the screenshots. Bier restored the tool Saturday, noting that discrepancies were linked to factors such as outdated IP ranges and VPN usage. The platform removed the “account creation location” field after the controversy, leaving only a listing of current location, username-change history and application source. Government-verified “gray check” accounts now display limited information, though the DHS profile is currently the only one showing a location field.
Users on both sides of the political spectrum continued posting examples of foreign-based accounts presenting themselves as US activists. Influencers compiled galleries of prominent MAGA-aligned pages appearing to operate from Pakistan, New Zealand, Morocco, Russia and Bangladesh. Analysts who study influence operations noted that foreign participation in US political conversations is longstanding, though platform-wide visibility into IP-derived locations is rare.
The feature’s early inaccuracies make broad conclusions unreliable. VPN routing, shared device networks, travel patterns and legacy IP allocations can all distort geolocation data, a pattern previously observed on other platforms that tied location metadata to historical login activity. Still, the disclosures revived scrutiny of coordinated political activity on X, particularly as the US heads into an election cycle in which bot networks and outsourced engagement farms have been a recurring concern.
X said the new “About This Account” tool will update information on a delayed and randomized schedule to limit the ability to infer users’ movements. Bier acknowledged “rough edges” that will be addressed in an upcoming patch and promised periodic corrections. The company has not specified how frequently location data will be refreshed or how it intends to separate legitimate cross-border activity from orchestrated influence campaigns.
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