Elon Musk’s X rolls out feature that shows users’ country of origin – then suddenly removes it

If you were browsing Elon Musk's X late Friday night, you might have seen a brand new, long-awaited feature appear.

Visitors to X could go to any user's profile page, click on their join date to view a new “About This Account” page that showed exactly what country the account was based in. This information was different from the normal “Location” information on X's profile page because it showed exactly where the account was posting from based on their IP address rather than what the user entered themselves.

The country of origin disclosure received widespread support among X users. Then suddenly, without notice, the country of origin was removed from the About This Account page just hours after its overnight debut.

Mashable reported this feature is on its way last month. X's head of product, Nikita Bir, initially teased the feature by launching it on his own account as a demo of how it would work before it became visible on other X users' accounts.

It's unclear why X quickly removed the feature shortly after it was released publicly. However, Beer responded to some X users who reported that their About This Account section was displaying inaccurate information, which may be the reason for the feature being disabled.

One user X named “Canadian Beaver” revealed that his country of origin was the United States, despite living in Canada.

“We’ll fix it now,” Beer replied. “Looks like Starlink hit us.”

In addition to the current country of origin, the About This Page also displays the user's place of residence when they first create an account. One X user reported that his joining date was inaccurately displayed as Korea.

“We have identified an issue: It looks like you used a VPN to register your account in '22,” Beer told the user. “On Monday we will add the indicator to this line for Android and iOS, and tomorrow it will appear online.”

Based on Beer's responses, it appears that X may have removed the feature to fix location inaccuracies caused by VPNs, and intends to re-launch the feature in the coming days.

X users have largely welcomed the country of origin feature, as many believe it will curb the spread of misinformation and propaganda by foreign actors related to political discussions on the platform. Facebook has a similar feature for Facebook Pages, where users can view the country of origin of the page's administrators, although Facebook does not reveal the profiles behind the Pages.

We'll soon find out if Musk's social media platform will restore this feature.