If you were perusing Elon Musk’s X late Friday night, you might have seen a brand new, highly anticipated feature roll out.
X visitors were able to go to any users’ profile page, click on their join date to view a new “About this account” page which revealed exactly which nation an account was based. This information differed from the usual “Location” detail on an X profile page, as it showed exactly where an account was posting from based on their IP address, not what the user input themselves.
The country of origin disclosure was broadly lauded among X’s user base. Then, suddenly, without notice, the country of origin was removed from the “About this account” page just hours after it made its late-night debut.
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Mashable reported last month that the feature was on the way. X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, originally teased the feature, rolling it out on his own account as a demo of how it would work before it was visible on any other X users’ accounts.
It’s unclear exactly why X quickly removed the feature shortly after rolling it out to the public. However, Bier replied to some X users who were reporting that their “About this account” was showing inaccurate information, which may be the reason why the feature was taken down.
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One X user named “Canadian Beaver” shared that their country of origin was appearing as the United States despite residing in Canada.
“Fixing this now,” Bier replied. “Looks like Starlink threw us off.”
Along with the current country of origin, the “About this page” also displayed where a user resided when first creating the account. One X user reported that their join date location was inaccurately displayed as Korea.
“We identified the problem: it looks like you used a VPN to register your account in ’22,” Bier said to that user. “We are adding a indicator on that row on Monday for Android and iOS—and it will be live on web tomorrow.”
Based on Bier’s responses, it seems X may have removed the feature to fix location inaccuracies caused by VPNs, and the intention is to re-roll out the feature in the coming days.
X users mostly welcomed the country of origin feature, as many feel it would discourage foreign actors from spreading misinformation and propaganda related to political discussions on the platform. Facebook has a similar feature for Facebook Pages, where users can view the country of origin for the administrators of the page, although Facebook does not reveal the profiles behind the pages.
We’ll soon find out if Musk’s social media platform reinstates the feature.