This is the Elon Musk Podcast, your daily hit of what is really going on at Tesla, SpaceX, XAI, and the rest of the Musk universe. I'm your host Will Walden, and I have covered Elon Musk for more than five years, spent a year on the ground at SpaceX, Starbase during early Starship development, and before this I spent my career as a software developer working with billion dollar companies.
I've also built and sold my own businesses and now I make content and help other people grow their companies. Now on this show, I used that experience to break down the news, filter out all the noise, and give you clear context you
can actually use. Elon Musk's social network X added a About this account feature that shows an account's country or region, and users immediately spotted the several large pro Trump fan accounts post from outside of the United States. Now the topic is how that single design change exposed the true base of popular political profiles. I know you can use it to check what you see. Are there foreign actors instead of people near you that are trying to influence you?
Now the payoff is clear. You will know what this tool shows, how reliable it is, and what early findings say about some of the most viral accounts on X. Now one striking threat is how many of these accounts claim AUS identity in their bio. You know who they are, the people with the eagle American flag and you know USAUSAUSA all over the place. They claimed US identity of the bio while the location panel points somewhere else.
Now what does this sudden transparency change about how we read political content on X and who you can trust? Now some of the biggest fan pages for Trump family members, mega memes and right wing slogans trace to places like Nigeria, Eastern Europe and Thailand. And we'll talk about how the new panel works, what early sleuthing has uncovered, how accurate the location readout is and where people have already faked screenshots. What a sensible user checklist looks like.
Now I'll also talk about practical steps, specific examples, and the limits you should assume before you share a political post. And we'll get right into that after this very short break. All right, everybody, welcome back. Today we're talking about XS, about this account pain and what it revealed about foreign based political profiles. The panel sits behind the sign up date on an account page and exposes location along with other basic metadata. This thing's amazing.
Now that puts quick context one tap away from anyone evaluating A viral post. You just look at the profile, you see they're not from your country and then they don't matter, right? Let's start with how the feature works, then move to the account people found in the caveats you need to apply each time you look at one of these accounts before you get rage baited into something. So you access the location by tapping or clicking the sign up data on a profile. There's now opens in about this
account card. The card shows a country or a broader region for some accounts because it places with restrictive speech rules. X allows users to display only a region such as South Asia and X's head of products that the feature rolled out across the platform and describe it as a first step toward helping users verify authenticity.
He also claimed a very high accuracy rate, while the product warns VPNs and some proxies can blur the reading and even adds a notice when it detects that the location may be unreliable. Now treat the readout as a signal with limits. Not a complete verdict for that person though. Now as soon as the panel appeared, users began checking. Well known MAGA handles a fan account for Ivanka Trump with about a million followers showed Nigeria as its base.
A cluster of other right leaning personalities landed outside US borders as well, including a dark mega profile tied to Thailand, a mega scope account in Nigeria, and a mega beacon account in South Asia. Another page branded around Mega nation X with hundreds of thousands of followers in a patriotic bio American flag eagle. Those things was identified as operating from Eastern Europe. The pattern was not isolated to one account or one region. And these trolls are all over the world now.
There were checks from News Guard and others and they found multiple accounts that present as American yet register in Eastern Europe, Asia or Africa. And one large fan page for Barron Trump, for example, lists Eastern Europe non EU in its location panel, while its profile bio claims Mar a Lago. And the same reporting points out that these accounts have pushed provocative claims about US politics, including unfounded allegations about debate moderators taking bribes.
Now that makes a patriotic branding foreign base and sensational content explains why the feature sparked so much attention. It turns a guess about origin into a visible, testable detail. I don't know if you've been on X and you've seen these kind of profiles and just wondered. This person's probably not in the US. These people probably do not even exist. It could be a content farm. It could be a troll farm trying
to swing an election. Now. My analysis is that the most immediate value here is triage. If a viral post reads as if an everyday US voter wrote it, but the about this account card places the operator in another country, you should just adjust how you interpret the message. Just don't pay attention to it. Some of these pages they are trying to make money where accounts post engagement bait to farm clicks, followers and paid posts.
That does not rule out state work but it does fit in engagement economy where outrage drives revenue and they could be selling products. A location panel will not tell you motive yet it can flag where the voice in your feed does not match the identity on the page. Use this mismatch to slow down before you share any of this stuff. Now accuracy is the next concern and you should build that into
your workflow. Access product had claimed near perfect accuracy of about this update, but the system itself warns about VPNs and proxies and sometimes labels of view as potentially inaccurate. That means AUS user who routes traffic through another country can appear foreign and a foreign operator can try to appear domestic. Now, Cornell Tech's trust and safety expert said this is harmful, useful, but limited signal the bad actors will adapt
to overtime. So they're just going to get VPNs and that is the right frame help context, helpful. Context, never a sole criterion, now misused, cropped up fast. AP has documented that some users created fake screenshots to smear opponents claiming foreign locations where the real cards did not show them. The speed of that tactic proves why you should verify on the live profile instead of trusting a screenshot floating around a reply thread.
Screens can be cropped editor, Just Photoshop or Canva. I mean, how easy is that? Or they could be pulled from older versions If a claim rests on an image. Click through and check the About This Account panel page for yourself. Now, I've been digging through the analytics of this show right here, and I've noticed that 37% of you are following this channel. For you, I'm forever grateful to the other 63% who haven't hit
the follow or subscribe button. I've been an independent journalist covering Elon Musk, spaceflight and tech for the last six years, and I'll continue for the next 10 years. And all I ask for you is one second of your time to hit the follow or subscribe button on the platform you're watching or listening on right now. I'm extremely grateful for you and I'm blessed to have you in this community. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Now, here's a simple checklist you can use when you evaluate a political post on X. First, tap the sign update on the author's profile and open the About this account card. Note the country or region. Second, scan the rest of the card for context that it contains, including when the account joined, any username change history, and how the app was downloaded. Third, look for a disclaimer that the location may be inaccurate or considered whether
AVPN could explain a mismatch. 4th, read the bio and pin posts and ask whether the identity claims align with what the panel shows. 5 quick steps Add a layer of discipline to your social media without turning you into like a crazy forensic lab. Here. And some users have found a spread of mega pages with foreign bases from Eastern Europe to Nigeria to Thailand and even collected follower
cuts. For context, AP highlighted a Baron Trump fan account, the show's non-us region, while claiming A prominent Florida locale in the profile text. Those two threads together show both the scale and texture of the issue. Multiple accounts, different regions, and consistent patriotic branding that'll wave and flag gift maybe. And the accounts do not all push the same lines, but many churn out in motives and topics for US politics. And that's designed to harvest
engagement and rage. And you should treat it that way. Don't treat everything you see on X or any social media with any sort of prominence because they're not everyone's in it for themselves. And whether that's money and you have to look, look at it all. Look at the whole picture. Don't just look at what they say. Look at the whole picture. Look at why they're saying it, who they are, where they're from, the context of what they're saying.
If they say something like, you know, America is going down the tubes due to Democratic something rather look at the profile, see where they're from and see if they even matter. Because if they're not American, then why do they care? You know, like what's the don't even worry about them because they don't matter. You know, not that they don't matter as a person, but they don't matter to American politics. So the motivation some operators
could be state actors. Many likely chase income by posting commentary, memes and videos that spark replies and repost and rage bait you. It's a business model, not an ideology. And the location feature helps you spot when a pages claimed identity looks like stagecraft. My guidance here is very simple. Separate the content from the costume, then just the claim on the evidence, not on flags and avatars or references to heartland towns.
If the page collects tips, runs paid subscriptions, or sells merch, assume engagement sits near the top of its goals. They need to see some eyes on this thing so they can make money from their merch sales. They want to sell that Donald Trump with his bulging muscles standing on top of a a tank waving the American flag with an eagle on his shoulder. They want to sell that T-shirt and they want you to buy it.
And that's why they do this. And I'm saying this because I think it's hilarious that those shirts exist because that's silly. But if they can make $10 in their country from selling this shirt, it could be a lot of money for them. If they could sell a hundred of those shirts, they could be doing really well.
So just think about that before you click through these profiles, before you even take them seriously and also call them out if you see them doing this kind of stuff because it's just rage bait and they're trying to make money, which I, I, I love hustlers. I love it when people hustle and make money. That's one of the things that I'm into. I love business.
I've hustled, I've made money, I've built companies, I've sold companies, I've been equi hired, I've had numerous acquisitions over the years and I love the hustle. So I get it. You want to make the best money for your family, right? You want to make as much money as you can, but you're also lying and you're being a a rat. So we don't want rats and our social media, right? So call them out. Make sure you call them out.
But some users cheered the new found visibility instead of confirmed what they suspected after certain accounts. And others questioned whether exposing location crosses a privacy line and argued that where someone posed from should not matter. If the facts hold up. I agree with that. If they're facts, yes.
If it's rage bait, no. So there's debate in the replies, including concerns about privacy, and there's also celebration right now from some liberal influencers who said the panel vindicated long standing warnings that they had. You don't. You don't have to pick a side though to use this tool. You only need to use it consistently. Use it for both sides. Use it for all sides. But don't just use it for people
that you think are wrong. Think about the people that you think are right and why are they doing what they're doing? Always think about the why are they doing this? Because they believe in this and they want this to be the outcome, whatever that is, and they think it's going to be a positive. Or are they just doing to sell merch? Most people that do things to sell money or to to make money and sell merch or sell like a course or something like that. Now one more contextual note
matters for really heavy users. If you're an ex user, that's just wild on there. These findings are in a longer history of bots and false claims on Twitter before and after it became X, and mentions that the platform's Grok chatbot has made errors as well. That background explains why a small change like a location panel creates waves. People are hungry for any signal that helps them sort the real
from the performative. The location field will not cure misinformation and it just won't ever. It does, however, add a small speed bump that forces a second look. Now it would be great if it were on the post page, right underneath the headline or underneath the person's profile. You know, put a little flag there, a little flag icon. That would be great. That would be more beneficial than some that having to dig through somebody's profile and it would shut down these
accounts immediately. Because if you're an American citizen and you're a flag waving, gun toting American, I'll tell you what. You look at a you look at a profile that posts about Nancy Pelosi or something like that and they have a flag from say China or Japan or someplace in Russia. You know, who knows where the flag could be from, but there's a possibility. Or even Africa, who knows? But you would not trust them Eastern Europe, you're like, why do you even care?
Like, what are you doing? Like you're not American citizen. So like not stay out of our politics, but because you have the freedom to speak about whatever you want to in this country. But you see that flag and you're like, oh, you're from Nigeria. Probably, you know, probably don't have our best interest at heart. So in summary this about this account card behind the sign update. This shows that accounts country or region and other basic
details is important. Early checks found several large mega branded profiles posting from outside the US, including examples tied to Eastern Europe, Nigeria, Thailand and the Barron Trump fan page which I mentioned earlier was from Eastern Europe, non EU despite being from quote Mar a Lago, which is a total lie in the bio. And the tool is useful but not definitive because there's VPNs of course and proxies. Proxies can cloud the reading and screenshots can be faked of
course. So treat the panel as a source of context in a wider verification routine for now. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your support. If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly appreciate it. It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never miss an episode. And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly.
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