The Great X Unmasking: Your Favorite Influencer Might Be Half a World Away
If you spent any time on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, over the weekend, you likely noticed a digital detective frenzy. It all started with a new, quietly rolled-out feature that lets you see a crucial detail about an account: its country of origin. And let me tell you, the results have been wild, turning a simple transparency update into a full-blown social media exposé.
X’s new “About this account” feature, which you can find by clicking on an account’s join date, is designed to show exactly where a user is posting from, based on their IP address. This is a big deal because it bypasses that little “Location” field on a profile—the one the user can type in themselves. The goal, according to the platform, is to boost authenticity and combat foreign influence, but the immediate effect was a massive, public unmasking.
Online sleuths quickly got to work, focusing their magnifying glasses on accounts with massive followings that regularly wade into highly partisan American politics. What they discovered was startling: many influential profiles, often plastered with US flags and slogans like “America First” or “Make America Great Again,” weren’t actually based in the United States.
For example, accounts that claimed to be diehard US patriots were revealed to be operating out of places like Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Eastern Europe. One popular account, *MAGANationX*, which describes itself as a “Patriot Voice for We The People” and has nearly 400,000 followers, was traced back to Eastern Europe. Similarly, a high-profile *Ivanka Trump* fan account with over a million followers was suspended after users noted its location was Nigeria. And it wasn’t just one side of the aisle; an account identifying as a “proud Democrat” was revealed to be based in Kenya, leading them to quickly delete their profile.
For researchers who study online misinformation, this feature is a huge win. For years, they’ve been trying to prove that many of these hyper-partisan profiles were fake, often using stolen photos and odd posting schedules as evidence. Now, they have hard data on their geographic origin, confirming that extensive networks of accounts promoting US-focused political content are simply run by people abroad, many of whom are simply trying to make a profit by stirring up division.
Now, to be fair, the rollout wasn’t perfect. Almost as quickly as the feature appeared over the weekend, it was briefly pulled. X’s product head admitted there were “rough edges,” as the system sometimes incorrectly flagged people using VPNs or Starlink satellite internet. They also clarified that users in countries with strict speech laws can opt to display only a broader region, which is a key safety measure.
Despite the initial glitches, the transparency genie is out of the bottle. The feature has fundamentally changed how users view the political content in their feeds. Next time you read a viral post from an account with a US flag emoji and a fiercely patriotic bio, just remember to click that join date. You might find a surprise that helps you separate the authentic voices from the international digital echo chamber.