Building Walls in the Public Square
"About This Account" now shows country/region of account on X
The veil is lifting on X, exposing a global web of propagandists and freelancing grifters - and it’s total mayhem out there.
Everyone has been anticipating this for a few days now, but Nikita finally dropped the bomb, “In a couple of hours, we’ll be rolling out About This Account globally, allowing you to see the country or region where an account is based. This will be accessible by tapping the signup date on profiles.”
If you’ve been on X then you surely cannot escape the many corners with sizable propaganda effect. If anything, we have reached a level of propaganda fatigue I didn’t think was possible. Legion upon legions from every ideological persuasion pounced on a list of accounts they taunted or were taunted by. From Ethiopia to India to Thailand to Saudi Arabia to Russia, and round the world you go.
In every corner, there are operatives being exposed. There is an independent journalist. There is an activist. There are mercenaries. So many mercenaries. They say this is a public square, but it is a war zone.
The fallout of this update is going to take a few weeks to be fully sink in. Iranian activists are being outed via “VPN privilege.” Operatives in Turkey are being unmaked. The shocker that most US Right Wing and Leftist influencers are not even US-based. Madness reigns supreme on X right now.
Maybe we do need buffers - a virtual wall like a De-Propagandsized Zones (DPZs). Imagine geofencing your feed to your own region or country. A “Local only “ mode may just help turn down the temperature.
Vitalik Buterin weighs in, predicting it’ll work short-term but state actors will adapt fast, restoring chaos in six months. He’s spot on, yet it’ll at least crush the grift economy and sideline freelance propagandists. Back to the pros. Maybe.
It is unclear how this experiment will play out, and I think it will take a good 6-12 months for us to fully realize its impact. One can’t help shake the feeling that we are erecting virtual walls in a clear rebuke to the globalization of the public square.