Elon Musk's company X has started rolling out a new feature for user profiles that will display account information, including the account's location, the number of username changes, the original date the account was joined, and how the user downloaded the X app. The new information aims to reduce inauthentic engagement on the platform, where bots often pose as humans, which may be even more difficult for police to detect in the age of artificial intelligence.
X's plans for this feature were first announced in October, when X product manager Nikita Bier said the company would experiment with displaying this information on profiles, starting with his own account and those of X employees. The idea is that by revealing these details, users will be able to make a more informed decision about whether they are interacting with a genuine account or whether the account is a bot or bad actor looking to sow discord or spread disinformation.
For example, if account X's bio states that the user is from a U.S. state, but the account information shows that he lives abroad, you might suspect that he had a different goal.
Last weekend, Bier responded to a post in which a user asked Elon Musk to require accounts to display information about where they are. telling the user “Give me 72 hours.”
Since then, more and more people have noticed that the “About this account” feature has become available on their profiles.
To view your account information online or in the X mobile app, click the “Joined” date in your profile. From here you'll be taken to a page that shows the date you joined Twitter/X, the location of your account, the number of times your username has changed and the date it was last changed, and how you're connected to X – for example, via the US App Store or Google Play.
But during Some users globally If reporting that the feature appeared on their own profiles, TechCrunch does not have access to this account information on other people's profiles as of press time. This may be because X wants to give users time to preview the information for accuracy and adjust settings before it is rolled out more broadly.
Specifically, X allows users to customize whether the feature displays their country or just their geographic region. Originally, the company said this would be an option in areas where free speech may be subject to penalties, but our findings show that even US users can set their profile to display country or region/continent. (However, the default value is country.)
To make the change, you can go to the “Your Account Information” setting in the X app's “Privacy & Security” settings.
One reverse engineer while reviewing the app's code (see below), I also discovered that X is probably working on an additional feature that would display a warning on your account if you're using a VPN to mask your location. It's unclear if or when this feature will be rolled out, but if it does, it will mean to others that “the user's country or region may not be accurate.”
X did not respond to a request for comment on the implementation. However, Bier he was joking about all recent sightings, which indicates that people saw the feature when it first started appearing.
X is not the first social network to provide users with this level of transparency. Instagram has been offering for a long time a similar “About this account” feature.for example.
