In the wake of AI advancements making bots seem more and more human user profiles, Elon Musk’s X is working on a new feature that would surface more information about people using an X profile, to help people better discern who they’re speaking with on the platform.
New users will begin noticing a bit more information on Social Media platform X user profiles – additional data on when the account was created, where it’s located, how many times the username has changed, and how it’s using X.
The theory is that by exposing some of this information, users will know whether the person behind an account seems to be real or possibly a bot or bad actor spreading misinformation.
For example, if an account has a user bio indicating it is based in a U.S. state and the Twitter data shows that its placement is overseas, you might suspect the account has another agenda.
Similarly, if it indicates they’ve downloaded the X app in an international app store but claim they’re in the U.S., you can also consider whether they are being honest. (That’s not to suggest that someone couldn’t have first started an account from elsewhere, then moved to the U.S., but it is a signal that could be matched with others — say, several changes of username, maybe? — as red flags).
X will start testing out the feature, first on a few X employee profiles next week, to gather feedback before expanding it more widely, Nikita said. He also said in response to a question about user privacy that people would be able to opt out of having the information posted. But, he added, “if a user configures [the privacy toggles], that will likely be surfaced on their profile.”
He also responded to worries about revealing the location of people who may live somewhere that speech carried penalties, noting that X could alternatively insert the region (rather than country) in such instances.
The concept of showing more information around a social media account in efforts to let users get to know who they might be interacting with on the specific platform is not new. Indeed, and just last month at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said users on the photo- and video-sharing app today could go to someone’s profile and get a roughly equivalent batch of info.
“If you go to my profile today, you can click and find out what other types of things we know about me as a user; how long I’ve had this account; which country I’m based in; how many times I’ve changed my username — all sorts of little signals that you might be able to use to decide for yourself how much or little you trust or don’t trust,” he said, adding that Instagram would perhaps “do more” down the road in terms of offering additional context.
If the changes X is contemplating are publicly introduced, there’s a potential for them to mitigate some of the trust issues, but scammers and spammers often find effective methods to skirt around attempts at exposure. The news comes after the recent bot purge on X, where the company cut off 1.7 million bots involved in reply spam.
