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X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

hindustantimes.com

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Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#141

Post by lazide »

api wrote: post #137
p1necone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really surprised it was rolled back given Musks political leanings. I am surprised it was even added in the first place though, surely this outcome was obvious?

I’d be willing to believe Musk was actually surprised. Like a lot of people into heavy political ideology he seems to vastly overestimate the number of people who think the same way about things. He seems to inhabit a serious echo chamber.

When you have that much money, it’s actually hard to find someone who will tell you something you don’t want to hear that is actually true and isn’t doing it just to ragebait you or the like.

And I don’t think he’s been trying all that hard either.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#142

Post by pixl97 »

happosai wrote: post #118
jsheard wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out that if you pay users for engagement then users will post whatever gets the most engagement, regardless of whether it's true. Who could have forseen this.

To be fair I don't think many expected making people angry would be the best strategy for engagement. You would think people would get tired of being angry and would stop using web sites that keep making them angry.

This video will make you angry is 10 years old now.

https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc

Anger works wonders online.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#143

Post by energy123 »

lurk2 wrote: post #128
stefan_ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are all these Israeli accounts? That just seems to be your weird personal bias. Weird, because you can just confirm it for yourself now!

> Where are all these Israeli accounts? The Department of Homeland Security, for one. Edit: Link removed as I was disinformed by a /pol/ PsyOp.

That is a doctored image according to both DHS and X's head of product. What kind of information bubble are you in?

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#144

Post by gonzobonzo »

duxup wrote: post #19

I never quite "got" twitter, it was never fun for me to participate on. It's telling / disturbing that folks had such trust in random accounts ...

All social media (including HN) is horrible in some ways. And they all suffer from too many people being overly credulous to random comments.

But the problem with over credulity goes far beyond social media. I've gotten strong push back for telling people they shouldn't trust Wikipedia and should look at primary sources themselves.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#145

Post by seattle_spring »

energy123 wrote: post #98
lurk2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The network was small: just 49 Facebook accounts, 85 Instagram accounts and 71 Twitter accounts in question. This is the pattern with all Russian influence operations; they’re always implied to be ominously large and end up being laughably small. American political polarization had nothing to do with the Russians; this is just the refrain of frustrated Democrats who refuse to acknowledge the consequences of ill-con…

This sounds like being wilfully uninformed. Russia organized almost a dozen Black Lives Matter protests, one of them attended by Michael Moore. They ran about half of the largest US identity focused Facebook groups (Christian/Black/etc) during the 2020 US election. I gave you one small example, it's on you to look for the full picture rather than jump to an erroneous conclusion based on god knows what motivations. Th…

> This sounds like being wilfully uninformed. Russia organized almost a dozen Black Lives Matter protests, one of them attended by Michael Moore. They ran about half of the largest US identity focused Facebook groups (Christian/Black/etc) during the 2020 US election

Maybe it wasn't your intent, but your comment makes it sound like this was an issue with only a single side of the political spectrum. However...

https://www.businessinsider.com/russians-organized-pro-anti-...

> The Russians weaponized social media to organize political rallies, both in support of and against certain candidates, according to the indictment. Although the Russians organized some rallies in opposition to Trump's candidacy, most were supportive.

Not to mention the recent exposure of the funding source of the fine folks over at Tenet Media.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#147

Post by bawolff »

rzerowan wrote: post #138

On a technical note , is geolocation ever truly accurate. I guess they are doing this by IP and App store records - which are generally trivial to change. IP blocks can shift and get repuposed so thats not accurate , and app store change is just a toggle away. Is there any forum/app thats geolocked their users successfully to bypass IP recog or VPNs? I think only the national level carriers could pull of something li…

I believe there are companies that offer more accurate geolocation services by essentially having a deal with phone companies where they get secret info where the customer actually is from mobile companies records.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#148

Post by mjbale116 »

agentifysh wrote: post #7

X obviously isn't the only platform where this is taking place and it is curious as to why they rolled it back. how open are you to a US citizen verified town square online? You'd have to scan your passport or driver license to post memes and stuff.

All I want to know, is whether I am talking to an actual person. And I also want that person to have a single account, not multiple ones

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#149

Post by p1necone »

bpodgursky wrote: post #35
p1necone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really surprised it was rolled back given Musks political leanings. I am surprised it was even added in the first place though, surely this outcome was obvious?

It was rolled back temporarily because the first version had an "account created in country [X]" indicator that was found to be unreliable. The new version (which is active now) just has the country the user is currently in.

Sounds like this will stay useful for like a few days at best until these accounts work out what VPN to use to spoof the location properly.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#150

Post by Lammy »

ro_bit wrote: post #72

Reminds me of when Reddit posted their year end roundup https://web.archive.org/web/20140409152507/http://www.reddit... and revealed their “most addicted city” to be the home of Eglin Air Force Base, host of a lot of military cyber operations. They edited the article shortly afterward to remove this inconvenient statistic

> host of a lot of military cyber operations

Relevant: “Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity” (2014), Air Force Research Laboratory, Eglin AFB: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf

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