Charlie Warzel writes:

Over the weekend, Elon Musk’s X rolled out a feature that had the immediate result of sowing maximum chaos. The update, called “About This Account,” allows people to click on the profile of an X user and see such information as: which country the account was created in, where its user is currently based, and how many times the username has been changed. Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, said the feature was “an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square.” Roughly four hours later, with the update in the wild, Bier sent another post: “I need a drink.”

Almost immediately, “About This Account” stated that many prominent and prolific pro-MAGA accounts, which signaled that they were run by “patriotic” Americans, were based in countries such as Nigeria, Russia, India, and Thailand. @MAGANationX, an account with almost 400,000 followers and whose bio says it is a “Patriot Voice for We The People,” is based in “Eastern Europe (Non-EU),” according to the feature, and has changed its username five times since the account was made, last year. On X and Bluesky, users dredged up countless examples of fake or misleading rage-baiting accounts posting aggressive culture-war takes to large audiences. An account called “Maga Nadine” claims to be living in and posting from the United States but is, according to X, based in Morocco. An “America First” account with 67,000 followers is apparently based in Bangladesh. Poetically, the X handle @American is based in Pakistan, according to the feature.

At first glance, these revelations appear to confirm what researchers and close observers have long known: that foreign actors (whether bots or humans) are posing as Americans and piping political-engagement bait, mis- and disinformation, and spam into people’s timeline. (X and Musk did not respond to my requests for comment.)

X’s decision to show where accounts are based is, theoretically, a positive step in the direction of transparency for the platform, which has let troll and spam accounts proliferate since Musk’s purchase, in late 2022. And yet the scale of the deception—as revealed by the “About” feature—suggests that in his haste to turn X into a political weapon for the far right, Musk may have revealed that the platform he’s long called “the number 1 source of news on Earth” is really just a worthless, poisoned hall of mirrors.

If only it were that simple. Adding to the confusion of the feature’s rollout are multiple claims from users that the “About” function has incorrectly labeled some accounts. The X account of Hank Green, a popular YouTuber, says his account is based in Japan; Green told me Sunday that he’d never been to Japan. Bier posted on X that there were “a few rough edges that will be resolved by Tuesday,” referring to potentially incorrect account information. (On some accounts, a note is appended pointing out that the user may be operating X through a proxy connection, such as a VPN, which would produce misleading information.) For now, the notion that there might be false labels could give any bad actor the ability to claim they’ve been mislabeled.

This is the final post-truthification of a platform that long ago pivoted toward a maxim used by the journalist Peter Pomerantsev to refer to post-Soviet Russia: Nothing is true and everything is possible. This is how you get people apparently faking that the Department of Homeland Security’s account was created in Israel (a claim that has 2 million views and counting); both DHS and Bier had to intervene and assure users that the government’s account was not a foreign actor. High-profile right-wing accounts that previously served as yes-men for Musk—such as Ian Miles Cheong, a Malaysian who purportedly lives in the United Arab Emirates and posts incessant, racist drivel about American politics—have melted down over the platform’s decision to dox users. [Continue reading…]