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When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he repeatedly promised to reduce the number of bots on the siteand presented plans to “verify the authenticity of all real people.” Now in 2025, on a social networking site known as X, the true numbers of X bots are unknown, although Cybersecurity Firm Talks to Mashable said 76% of the traffic coming from X during last year's Super Bowl was fake. Add to this the fact that plans to authenticate real users have now been replaced paid verification schemeand it's obvious that the site is still trying to figure out how to deal with fake users. The latest plan? Place some of your personal information in the “About This Account” section of your profile page.
In an X post this week, X product lead Nikita Beer said that starting next week, the social networking site will begin “experimenting with displaying new information in profiles.” This includes information about what country the user is in, when they joined the site, how many times they have changed their username, and how they access the site (for example, through a computer or through an application).
The idea, Beer says, is that checking this information will allow users to “verify [an account's] authenticity”. For example, if you are receiving spam from a group of suspicious subscribers and they all seem to be new accounts from the same region, you can conclude that you have been subjected to some kind of coordinated spam attack.
At the same time, however, the new section is fraught with privacy concerns. One userfor example, Bira asked whether X accounts would be able to opt out of displaying the country they are in publicly. Another, apparently a supporter of the new system, asked whether the page could include information about what device a user is posting from, to which Beer responded that the team is “experimenting with different device details so users can form judgments about authenticity.” Yes.
While none of this is as invasive as simply posting your address, it does lift the curtain a little more than I'd like and leaves the door open for others to judge you based on geographic location or, if Beer gets that second point, your phone model.
What are your thoughts so far?
Fortunately, this feature is not yet guaranteed to be available to everyone. Beer says initial testing will begin with “a handful of Team X members getting feedback.” And we must give him credit, he responded to his post very responsively: confession that in “countries where speech can lead to punishment, we should replace region with country.”
If you are not happy with the new section, now is the time to speak up. However, if one day he does end up on your profile, then there is a positive aspect. Bir says if you do not want certain information published on your profile, “There will be privacy toggles.” However, if a user sets them up, he says “it will likely be highlighted in their profile.”
I've essentially moved away from X at this point and bots have been the main reason for that. However, I'm not sure that encouraging users to judge each other based on where they are (or even by changing their username, which is common during spooky season) is the right move. Although some countries more associated with inauthentic accounts than othersreal users live everywhere, and implying that readers should reject others simply based on where they are risks adding more toxicity to the pile. Take this strange answer to Beer's statement, which implies that…Canada?…is full of trolls.
