Elon Musk’s X activated a new feature over the weekend called “About this account,” which allows anyone to check where in the world an account is based. Many accounts purporting to be from the U.S. have been exposed as foreign influence operations. But the chaotic rollout by X has allowed plenty of disinformation to spread and is likely to cause even more problems for verifying information in the future.
It all started the night of Thursday, Nov. 20, when X users noticed that they could check the location of their own accounts by clicking the “joined” date in their bio. Users were expecting the rollout, since X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, wrote last week that it would be coming soon.
Right-wing influencer Katie Pavlich tweeted Nov. 15: “Hey @elonmusk, please make it mandatory that wherever an account is based – country – be featured in an account’s public profile. Foreign bots are tearing America apart. Thanks.”
Bier responded the same day with, “Give me 72 hours.”
Give me 72 hours.
— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) November 16, 2025
It took a bit longer than 72 hours, but users started to notice some locations on Nov. 20 and into the morning of Friday, Nov. 21. Some people claimed they could see the locations of other users, though Gizmodo couldn’t independently verify that claim. X hasn’t clarified whether the feature was actually live for other users to see a location. In a since-deleted tweet, Bier seemed to suggest people could only see their own location.
Whether it was fully live or not, people were already making photoshopped versions of various users to make them look like they were based in countries that they weren’t. But by not being clear about what was happening and when, it set off an opportunity for people to make more jokes, as well as to intentionally spread lies. And these lies couldn’t be fact-checked by going to a given user’s account.
In that fog of confusion, various claims emerged on X that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s account was based in Israel. Since the feature appeared to be disabled, nobody could actually check for themselves. But an Australia-based account called sneedfeeder posted a screen recording that claimed to show it was real during a period when people claimed there were glitches producing erroneous information.
By Saturday, Nov. 22, the feature was properly rolled out, and it was only a few hours later that Bier tweeted, “I need a drink.” Why? Because chaos had truly been unleashed, with countless MAGA accounts suddenly exposed as foreign operations. MAGANationX? Based in Eastern Europe. An account called News Ivanka Trump? Based in Nigeria. Barron Trump News? Also based in Eastern Europe. It went on and on like that Sunday in a seemingly endless parade of accounts that pretended to be pro-Trump “patriots” living in the U.S.
Other location reveals were less damning, but still interesting given their history of U.S.-focused content. DogeDesigner, an account that frequently gets boosted by Elon Musk and has over 1.7 million followers, is based in India. WallStreetBets, an account that shares a name with the subreddit that helped create the meme stock craze, is apparently based in Mexico. Ian Miles Cheong, a far-right influencer who often gets ridiculed for his obsession with U.S. politics, was long thought to be based in Malaysia. In reality, it turns out he’s based in the United Arab Emirates, according to X.
Cheong is not happy about his location being revealed like that. And he kind of has a point. There are plenty of reasons why anonymity might be important, and this does violate individual privacy in ways that users didn’t get much warning about. The new feature also reveals if a user might be using a VPN, something that is both necessary and often illegal in authoritarian countries that have banned U.S. social media sites.
And there are still so many questions about how this location tracker works and whether we can trust it. Bier tried to explain what it’s doing by writing: “It’ll update periodically based on available information. If it isn’t correct due to temporary relocation, it should update in fewer than 30 days.” But the location doesn’t appear to be working retroactively. Gizmodo checked a dormant account created in a country outside the U.S., and it simply didn’t have any location information.
What about that video purporting to show that the DHS account was being run out of Israel? DHS has denied that the video is real.
“I can’t believe we have to say this, but this account has only ever been run and operated from the United States,” the DHS account wrote on Sunday. “Screenshots are easy to forge, videos are easy to manipulate. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Bier, for what it’s worth, said that “Location was not available on any gray check account at any point,” referring to the color of the verification checks given to government accounts. He also insisted that “the account has only shown IPs from the United States” since its creation.
And it’s extremely likely DHS is telling the truth in this case, even if they lie about so many other topics. But it’s still entirely possible that there was some kind of glitch that allowed some users to see the locations of others, however briefly. We just don’t know for sure. In this environment, Musk and his employees at X are adding to the confusion.
Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 and set about radically changing the site. He got rid of so-called legacy verification, allowing anyone with $8 to buy a blue checkmark. The checkmark didn’t actually mean anything beyond the fact that a given user had $8, but Musk insisted that it was the best way to fight bots and fraud on the site. After all, who would spend $8? Well, a lot of people will spend $8, especially if your motive is to benefit from influencing people in another country.
Musk also launched a creator payout program, still another incentive for people to spend $8. If you’re going to make more than $8 per month for your ragebait and MAGA engagement, of course, you’ll make that kind of investment.
There’s also the question of how much anyone can trust the location information if the man who controls it is untrustworthy. If you checked Elon Musk’s location information over the weekend, it said he was based in the U.S., but it also said he was verified in 1969. This appears to be nothing more than a “69” joke since he was born in 1971 and it wasn’t a nod to his birth year. If you checked on Monday, it says Musk has been verified since 3000 BCE.
Musk is a far-right disinformation agent in his own right. He spent $43 billion to buy Twitter and has used it as a tool to promote his own worldview. The billionaire frequently admits that he’s manipulating both X and his AI chatbot Grok to conform to how he sees the world politically.
When an X user asked Musk last week why they were seeing tweets from left-wing lawmakers, Musk replied, “Because we are failing very badly with the recommendations algorithm. Doing my best to address this.”
Because we are failing very badly with the recommendations algorithm.
Doing my best to address this.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2025
The Tesla CEO isn’t trying to hide it. He’s built a radicalization engine, and when he tinkers with it too much, it praises Hitler and floats conspiracy theories about the killing of white farmers in South Africa. Just last week, Grok was saying that Musk was smarter than Albert Einstein and more fit than LeBron James. It also said that Musk was more worthy of devotion than Jesus Christ. But those kinds of high-profile flubs aren’t the influence operations that average users should really be worried about.
X is a mess, even on its best day. But Musk seems determined to make it even more chaotic with the rollout of a feature that doesn’t even make him look good. He’s built a site that’s swarming with white supremacists, anti-trans bigots, and pro-MAGA dipshits. And it turns out half those folks aren’t even based where they say they’re based.
Can you even trust that people are actually based where X says they’re based? Users are likely to point to this new feature as “proof.” But it’s important to keep in mind who you’re trusting when you cite X as a source. You’re putting your faith in the same guy who’s currently listed as being verified since 3000 BCE.
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