Twitter has started showing accounts' countries of origin. We explain whether this is dangerous and how to hide your country of origin.
Twitter has started showing the presumed location from which certain accounts are being run. This has become bad news for activists from authoritarian countries who try not to reveal their real location. But in reality, it's quite easy to almost hide where you're running your account from - we explain how.
X owner Elon Musk. Photo: Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty Images
How does this feature work, and is it dangerous?
On November 21, a new feature appeared on the X platform - if you click on the date of joining the platform, the menu will show not only general information, but also the country of origin of the account, as well as the client through which the user maintains it. It looks like this:
Click here to bring up the menu (in the red frame)
This is the information that is displayed - in addition to public data, also where the account is based and through what it is maintained (BelTA maintains it through the website)
The first and largest scandal arose after it turned out that accounts supporting Donald Trump. For example, it turned out that one of the major MAGA-themed channels (more than 400 thousand subscribers) is run from Eastern Europe, the fan account of Trump's daughter Ivanka News with a million subscribers is from Nigeria, and one of the channels Trump Fan Army (500+ thousand) is from India.
Activists from authoritarian countries expressed concern, some even calling it forced disclosure of data and worrying about their safety. Some people also believe that Twitter will reveal their travel data and show movements. The platform administration says that there is no reason to worry - they say that all risks have been taken into account.
Another problem is that if you use a VPN, the location will be inaccurate. However, Twitter will still show from which country's market you downloaded the program. And this is an additional risk of disclosing your real location.
For example, this is what the channel of the popular Russian blogger "polin, translate?" (@vs_polia) looks like. She uses a VPN, so her account is "based" in the Netherlands. But it can be seen that she is using a client from the Russian App Store, which makes it easy to calculate that she is from Russia.
This is what the account of blogger @vs_polia looks like
In fact, it is not entirely clear whether this will help avoid the spread of misinformation. Most of these accounts are not blocked. And they often achieve popularity through the number of comments, not the quality. At least, no possible measures against such accounts have been reported.
How to hide the country of origin of the account on Twitter?
But there is a setting that allows you to make your location more abstract. To enable it, you need to go to the settings through a browser on a computer or smartphone or an updated program for smartphones.
Settings menu on Twitter
There, select Privacy and safety. This menu item will open.
Top of the Privacy and safety menu
There, click About your account. A new menu will open.
About your account menu
Next, you should select Use Region/Continent. After that, the localization information will be more general. Here, for example, is what an account that is maintained from Poland looks like after enabling the setting:
X account with the Use Region/Continent setting enabled