X's new location transparency feature unleashes questions about origins of MAGA accounts

A new feature on X has stirred confusion, anger and a wave of online sleuthing after users discovered that the platform was suddenly displaying the surprising locations where certain accounts are based

A new feature on X has stirred confusion, anger and a wave of online sleuthing after users discovered that the platform was suddenly displaying the surprising locations where certain accounts are based.

Over the weekend, users noticed that clicking an account’s join date now opens a tab that shows the country or region in which the account is located.

X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, teased the feature last month as a way to help users verify the authenticity of content they read and limit the influence of troll farms, which often run political accounts from outside the countries they target.

The issue of inauthentic or "bot" accounts has plagued the platform, formerly Twitter, and other social media sites for over a decade. Perhaps most notably, inauthentic accounts on Twitter and other social media platforms were allegedly used by a Russian government operation in the run-up to the 2016 election in an attempt to influence the outcome. The incident set off a wave of concern online about the persistent presence of inauthentic accounts, but detection methods to sniff out such accounts remained unreliable for years.

When tech billionaire Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2022, he promised to address the issues of "bots" on the platform, conducting several purges early in his ownership of the company that took down many accounts. Though several studies have shown that suspected inauthentic activity on the platform has remained at persistent levels since Musk bought Twitter.