- X has recently introduced a feature that displays user location details on profiles.
- Vitalik highlights that the feature enhances transparency and raises potential privacy concerns.
During the weekend, X introduced a function that enables users to see the country where any account is located. Before the features’ launch, Nikita Bier, the product lead at X, attempted to present it as a move to tidy up the platform and enhance transparency. He said,
This is an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square. We plan to provide many more ways for users to verify the authenticity of the content they see on X.
According to Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s Co-founder, the new features offer clear benefits. These include increased transparency about users, enhancing confidence in the platform’s credibility as a social app. However, he said that these gains are unlikely to last once more sophisticated actors begin adapting to the system.
Prediction about this “show which country the account is from” thing:
In the short term it will have lots of positive effects.
In the medium term, the sophisticated actors will find ways to pretend to be from countries that they are not. Lots of ways to rent individual people’s…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 23, 2025
According to Buterin, some groups will almost certainly figure out ways to disguise their true origins, renting passports, phone numbers, IP addresses, or even entire identities.
In most cases, revealing country still leaves a very large anonymity set, but there are some people for whom even a few bits of leakage are risky, and they should not have their privacy retroactively rugpulled with no recourse,
He predicts that, in a matter of months, politically motivated troll accounts from random Eurasian countries could masquerade as U.S. or U.K. users, adopting names like “Defend Western Civilization” to push targeted narratives under the guise of local legitimacy.
Notably, several MAGA-themed accounts that claim to be patriotic American voices are, in fact, posting from places like Eastern Europe, Thailand, Nigeria, and Bangladesh.
For example, “ULTRAMAGA TRUMP2028” claims Washington, D.C., as its home, but X’s new location tag shows Africa. Another account, @American, with a bald eagle over an American flag for its profile picture, is actually based in Pakistan.
Buterin concludes by predicting that the new feature could allow for a greater understanding of how different communities think about different issues, in a way that is not easy to spoof. In a follow-up post, the founder noted that the new feature exposes users to privacy risks, stating “they should not have their privacy retroactively rugpulled with no recourse.”
I thought about this more and I think responders are right that revealing the country non-consensually without offering any opt-out option (not even “stop using your account”) is wrong.
In most cases, revealing country still leaves a very large anonymity set, but there are some…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 23, 2025
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