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.
Did you know Americans (and other nationals of any country) also live in other countries? Personally, I could be in several different countries at any given time, not accounting for VPN use.
The feature doesn’t reveal much.
That said, I also support the feature because it is data held by privileged users already. Make all privileged data public. No one should have more rights than anyone else, besides the greater rights we have over ourselves.
So what? So for every 1 in 100 times an “American” account is revealed to be posting from overseas it’s actually an American? 1% false positives, I’ll take that, fine. This still seems useful to me.
I travel constantly and use Lemmy. I don’t know what I’d do if someone attacked any opinion or statement I made because of the country I posted from. Have to explain each time why my IP says whatever country?