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When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he repeatedly promised to reduce the amount of bots on the site, and pitched plans to “authenticate all real humans.” Now, in 2025, the social media site known as X’s true bot numbers are unknown, although a cybersecurity firm speaking to Mashable said that 76% percent of traffic coming from X during last year’s Super Bowl was fake. Toss in the fact that those plans to authenticate real users have now been replaced by a paid verification scheme, and it’s clear the site is still figuring out how to deal with fake users. The most recent plan? Put a bunch of your personal information in an “About this account” section on your profile page.
In an X post this week, X head of product Nikita Bier said that starting next week, the social media site will begin “experimenting with displaying new information on profiles.” This includes which country a user is based in, when they joined the site, how many times they’ve changed their username, and how they’re accessing the site (via desktop or via the app, for instance).
The idea, Bier says, is that checking this information will allow users to “to verify [an account’s] authenticity.” For instance, if you’re being spammed with a bunch of suspicious followers, and they all seem to be new accounts from the same region, you might be able to infer that you’re being targeted by some kind of coordinated spam attack.
At the same time, however, the new section comes with privacy concerns. One user, for instance, asked Bier if X accounts will be able to opt out of having the country they’re based in displayed for all to see. Another, seemingly in favor of the new system, asked if the page could include information about which device a user is posting from, to which Bier replied that the team is “experimenting with various device details for users to form judgments on authenticity.” Yikes.
While none of that is quite as aggressive as just posting your address, it still peels back the curtain a bit more than I’d like, and leaves room for others to make judgments about you based on geography, or if Bier follows through on that second point, your model of phone.
What do you think so far?
Luckily, the feature isn’t guaranteed to make it live for everyone quite yet. Bier says that the initial test will begin with “a handful of X team members to get feedback.” And to his credit, he has been responsive in replies to his post, acknowledging that in “countries where speech can have penalties, we should substitute country for region.”
If the new section rubs you the wrong way, now’s the time to speak up about it. If, however, it does make its way towards your profile one day, there is a silver lining. Bier says that should you not want certain information made public on your profile, “There will be privacy toggles.” However, if a user configures them, he says “that will likely be highlighted on their profile.”
For my own two cents, I have essentially moved on from X at this point, and bots have been a big reason why. Still, I’m not sure encouraging users to judge each other based on where they’re located (or even username changes, which are common during spooky season) is the right move. While some countries are more associated with inauthentic accounts than others, real users live everywhere, and implying that readers should dismiss others based simply on where they are runs the risk of adding more toxicity to the pile. Take this bizarre reply to Bier’s announcement, which implies that users in…Canada?…are just a bunch of trolls.
