According to Fortune, Elon Musk’s X platform launched a global “About this Account” feature over the weekend that immediately revealed some surprising information. The feature, announced by X’s head of product Nikita Bier on Saturday, showed that multiple prominent MAGA accounts with large followings are actually based outside the United States. One account called MAGA NATION with over 400,000 followers appeared to be based in a non-EU Eastern European country, while another with 7,000 followers was located in Thailand. An Ivanka Trump fan account with more than 1 million followers was found to be based in Nigeria, and a Karoline Leavitt parody account with 168,000 followers appeared to be operating from Hong Kong. Hours after the rollout, X began removing some location information and Bier admitted the data was “not 100%” accurate, with some accounts already suspended or no longer available by Monday.
When transparency backfires
Here’s the thing about opening Pandora’s box—you can’t always control what flies out. X positioned this feature as a way to secure “the integrity of the global town square,” but it immediately created political headaches. The platform basically handed critics ammunition to question the authenticity of popular conservative voices. And they absolutely used it—people like Harry Sisson were quickly posting screenshots and calling it “one of the greatest days on this platform.”
But is the location data reliable? That’s the billion-dollar question. The feature apparently had some significant accuracy issues from the start. We’re talking about a system that reportedly placed YouTuber Hank Green’s account in Japan when he’s clearly based in the US. There are legitimate reasons location data could be wrong—people travel, they use VPNs, they move countries. Still, the pattern here is pretty striking.
The foreign influence angle
This isn’t just about embarrassing some political influencers. There’s a much bigger context here about foreign influence operations. We’ve known for years that countries like Russia and China run coordinated propaganda campaigns on social media platforms. Finding that popular political accounts are actually based in countries with known state-sponsored influence operations raises obvious red flags.
Now, to be clear—there’s no evidence linking these specific accounts to foreign governments. But the pattern matches what researchers have been warning about for years. When you combine location data with the content these accounts post, it creates a pretty concerning picture.
The technical mess behind the scenes
What’s really fascinating here is how quickly X had to walk back their own feature. Within hours of launch, they were removing location data and their product head was admitting the system wasn’t reliable. Then by Sunday, Bier was promising an “upgrade coming in 12 hours” that would bring accuracy to “nearly 99.99%.”
That’s a pretty dramatic improvement to promise overnight. It makes you wonder about the quality of their initial data collection methods. Are they using IP addresses? Registration information? Device location services? The fact that they’re scrambling to fix this suggests they didn’t anticipate how politically charged this information would be—or how inaccurate their systems were.
The bigger platform problem
So where does this leave us? X wanted to increase transparency but instead created a mess that undermines trust in both the platform and the accounts operating on it. They’re stuck between wanting to appear transparent while not wanting to embarrass certain political factions that are influential on the platform.
This whole situation highlights the fundamental challenge of content moderation and platform integrity. Even when you try to do the right thing, the implementation can backfire spectacularly. And when your platform becomes central to political discourse, every feature rollout becomes a political statement whether you intend it to be or not.
The real test will be whether X sticks with this feature once it’s “fixed.” Because if these location patterns hold up after the accuracy improvements, we’re going to have some very uncomfortable conversations about who’s really shaping political discourse online.
