The social media platform X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has caused a wide controversy in recent days after launching a feature that allows users to see the country or region of origin of accounts, opening the door to a wave of searches and investigations that have affected numerous accounts. Head of Product at X, Nikita Per, launched this feature late last week with the aim of enhancing transparency on a platform that technology experts see as rife with misinformation. Per wrote on his account: "This is an important first step to ensure the safety of the global digital town square." Soon, the platform was filled with posts revealing that dozens of right-wing online accounts, including those supporting former US President Donald Trump, were geolocated in countries like Nigeria, Bangladesh, or India. Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday an image of a post from an account called "Trump Army," which has over half a million followers on X, celebrating a Supreme Court decision that will allow the president to deport criminals to El Salvador. Per stated on Sunday that "there are some incomplete aspects, and they will be fixed by Tuesday," and later confirmed in another post that "a new update will ensure almost 99.99% accuracy." Users found that some accounts were flagged as being in different countries because their owners use VPNs or proxies, or even due to the user's short-term travel, and X acknowledged these issues and announced it is working to fix them. However, the new feature revealed that this particular account is based in India, according to the BBC, and it had previously changed its username four times, most recently in July 2022. This feature displays the country or region where an account is believed to have been created based on technical signals like IP addresses and the app store used, as well as other internal data. But after its launch, many errors have appeared in pinpointing account locations.
