A new feature meant to boost transparency on Elon Musk’s platform relies on data that researchers say can be inaccurate or easily spoofed.
Advocates for transparency on social media cheered this weekend when X, the app owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, rolled out a new feature that disclosed what the company said were the country locations of accounts.
The feature appeared to unmask a number of accounts that were portraying themselves as belonging to Americans but in reality were based in countries such as India, Thailand and Bangladesh.
But by Monday, the effectiveness and accuracy of the feature were already in question, as security experts, social media researchers and two former X employees said the location information could be inaccurate or spoofed using widely available technology, such as virtual private networks (VPNs), to hide their locations.
I don’t like how there’s a bunch of misinformation mixed into this whole situation. Lots of fake accounts got passed around as legit ones.
It almost feels like an exercise in sowing confusion and muddying the waters to me.
Absolutely. Release something to sow discord, while revealing truth. Confusion, acceleration, anger, fear.
Yeah Xwitter has shut the feature off temporarily so that the accounts that were exposed by it can set up VPNs and look like they totally come from the United States and not the countries that they were discovered to have been coming from.