X.com, formerly known as Twitter, globally rolled out new account transparency features early morning Manila time on Sunday, Nov. 23.
Called “About This Account”, the features allow users to view geographical details about where an account is based, the region of the app store the account is linked to, the original join date of an account, and how many times an account changed its username.
Nikita Bier, head of product at X, announced:
In a couple hours, we'll be rolling out About This Account globally, allowing you to see the country or region where an account is based. This will be accessible by tapping the signup date on profiles.
— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) November 22, 2025
This is an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town… pic.twitter.com/5d7cX21qGj
The move is a welcome boost for users of the platform as it has increasingly had a bad actor problem with bots and inauthentic accounts since Elon Musk took over and made cuts to the platform’s trust and safety team.
In April of 2022, X owner Elon Musk declared: “we will defeat spam bots or die trying!” and “authenticate all real humans”. However, a 2024 report by cybersecurity firm CHEQ found that over 75% of the traffic based on 144,000 sample visits from X to its advertising clients’ websites during the Super Bowl weekend were fraudulent.
After X rolled out geolocation transparency features over the weekend, prominent right-wing, MAGA, and pro-Trump X accounts were exposed to be foreign trolls and users from Russia, India, Thailand, Eastern Europe, Macedonia, Nigeria, and other countries.
An examination by Newsbytes.PH of X accounts targeting Filipinos with political messaging which were documented by Doublethink Lab, a Taiwanese think tank that fights Mainland Chinese disinformation campaigns, shows that the X identified them as potentially being based in the United Arab Emirates, Papua New Guinea, and Cambodia.
In the current era of online disinformation and political polarization, this transparency initiative by X is a boon to journalists, fact checkers, digital investigators, and researchers in surfacing malign actors and online influence operations. It is also a win for ordinary users, as it can help them spot account inauthenticity and react appropriately to the information they consume.
