 "Maga is rattled by X's new location transparency feature. Representational Image/Reuters")
X’s new feature that discloses the location of a user has flustered United States President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) base. Many of the influential accounts in the Maga movement on X, formerly Twitter, are based out of the US, the transparency feature has revealed.
The feature stirred a controversy after posts claiming that the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) X account was based in Israel went viral. The department has denied the claims.
We take a look.
X’s location transparency feature
Elon Musk-owned X released the “About This Account” feature on Friday (November 21).
This allowed users to see where an account is located, when it joined the social media platform, how often its username has been changed, as well as how the X app was downloaded.
X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, had teased the feature last month as a method to help users corroborate the authenticity of content they come across on the platform.
In a post on Saturday (November 22), he called the feature an “important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square. We plan to provide many more ways for users to verify the authenticity of the content they see on X.”
“And for those in countries where speech has penalties, we’ve included privacy toggles to only show your region,” he added.
Why Maga is rattled
Once the feature went live, political rivals began to delve into each other’s accounts. Soon, X was inundated with posts claiming that accounts of several Maga and rightwing influencers who project themselves as patriotic Americans are based outside the US.
These were found to be operating overseas from Eastern Europe, Thailand, Nigeria and Bangladesh.
Quick Reads
View AllAn account named ‘ULTRAMAGA 🇺🇸 TRUMP🇺🇸2028’ that claims to be based in Washington, DC, is actually based in Africa, as per the X transparency feature.
MAGANationX, which includes the bio line “Patriot Voice for We The People,” was actually located in Eastern Europe, while ‘DarkMagaCoin’ is located in Thailand.
MAGA Scope, which has over 51,000 followers, is operating from Nigeria, while MAGA Beacon is based out of South Asia. An account named ‘America First’ was located in Bangladesh.
Another now-deleted account that went by ‘Trump Is My President’ was listed as being based in Macedonia, reported NBC News.
“This is easily one of the greatest days on this platform,” wrote liberal influencer Harry Sisson. “Seeing all of these MAGA accounts get exposed as foreign actors trying to destroy the United States is a complete vindication of Democrats, like myself and many on here, who have been warning about this.”
Micah Erfan, a left-wing influencer, said that “like half of their large accounts were foreigners posing as Americans all along.”
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Is DHS’ account based in Israel?
Many screenshots and screen recordings claimed that the US DHS account on X was listed as being based in Israel.
Images and videos emerged on X allegedly showing the location field of the account as “Tel Aviv, Israel.”
This stirred a backlash on social media amid a growing outrage over the US’ support for Israel, which some say has surpassed Tel Aviv’s interests over America’s.
DHS first responded to the posts with a meme-like image of Trump, looking shocked. On Saturday, the department officially denied the claims.
“I can’t believe we have to say this, but this account has only ever been run and operated from the United States,” DHS posted. “Screenshots are easy to forge, videos are easy to manipulate. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Bier also responded to the chatter, telling a user to “stop spreading misinformation”. He said X’s account information feature was temporarily shut off “because the account creation country was incorrect on a very small subset of old accounts, due to IP ranges changing over time.”
He dubbed some of the posts showing the DHS account as being based in Israel as “fake news.”
“Location was not available on any gray check [government] account at any point,” he wrote in response to a screen recording, which X has now labelled as “manipulated media.” “Furthermore, the DHS has only shown IPs from the United States since account creation.”
As of Monday, the location information on the DHS account, which briefly became unavailable, can be seen again. This time, it reads: “United States.”
The VPN link
Some users pointed out that the use of VPN affected the location origin, showing it as that set on the VPN and not the actual country where they reside.
Bier said in a post that the tech company was planning to fix any potential discrepancies that might have been caused by VPNs. He added that there are still “a few rough edges” around the feature that should be resolved by Tuesday.
“If any data is incorrect, it will be updated periodically based on best available information,” X’s product development head wrote. “This happens on a delayed and randomised schedule to preserve privacy.”
With inputs from agencies