Murray Wood: Who's being fooled this April 1?
Murray Wood says every day is April Fools Day in the disinformation age and, as ever, some people will never believe the...
Last week the X platform, formerly Twitter, began its rollout of a new location feature meant to disclose which country account holders post from.
It aimed to increase transparency on the platform and help users spot the fake accounts known for spreading disinformation online. However, while its rocky rollout might have exposed the location to some accounts, others claimed their accounts displayed locations they’d never been to.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Since its global rollout this past weekend, clicking on the join date of a user’s X profile now leads to the “about this account” page, which includes the location an account is based in.
The new feature seemed to reveal that accounts for many Canadian political parties, businesses and media entities were based outside of Canada.
Some users noted that the accounts for the federal Liberal and NDP parties, as well as the BC NDP, had their locations listed as the United States (their locations have since changed to Canada).
In the United States, dozens of popular accounts known for posting content in favour of or against President Donald Trump appeared to be based outside of the country.
But some users claimed the location shown on their accounts wasn’t accurate.
WHY LOCATION DATA MIGHT NOT BE RELIABLE
Philip Mai, co-director of the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, said his own X account listed his location as Germany, a country he visited recently.
That’s because X relies on a user’s IP address, a unique identifier assigned to all devices that connect to the internet. If someone logged into X while travelling in a different country, their IP address would reflect that.
Another reason X location data isn’t always accurate is because some accounts use a VPN, or virtual private network, which can disguise an IP address by replacing it with the address of the VPN server.
“If that’s what X is relying on, it’s going to be inaccurate,” Mai said.
A BC NDP spokesperson said its account showed a U.S. location because it uses a content management system for its social media posts, and X tracked the IP address of the U.S.-based server. A Liberal party spokesperson referred The Canadian Press to X and said their social accounts “are of course run from Canada.”
Multiple X accounts associated with the Alberta separatist movement show locations outside of Canada.
The Alberta Prosperity Project, an account with more than 15,000 followers, said its Thailand location marker is inaccurate and called the error a “technical limitation” of X’s tool.
One separatist account said they were spending time in California, hence their U.S. location, while another said their U.S. location was the result of using a VPN.
Ahmed Al-Rawi, an associate professor at Simon Fraser University’s school of communication, said the location feature could be an interesting starting point to find clues about an account’s origin.
“But I would never rely on it,” he said.
Al-Rawi said that many social media apps have somewhat reliable methods of tracking a user’s location — he noted an example of how his TikTok algorithm changed to reflect local content when he changed countries, and said some apps like Instagram can identify buildings or other geographic features of posts to assign a location.
However, he said the rollout of X’s location feature caused finger-pointing and added to the toxicity already present on the app.
“This is just like an added layer that they thought would be helpful, but it just increased the confusion among a lot of people,” he said.
HOW DID X RESPOND?
Nikita Bier, the head of product for X, wrote in a post Saturday that the new feature had “a few rough edges that will be resolved by Tuesday.”
“If any data is incorrect, it will be updated periodically based on best available information,” Bier wrote.
A disclaimer that appears on X account locations notes that “The country or region that an account is based can be impacted by recent travel or temporary relocation. This data may not be accurate and can change periodically.”
Bier said the location data will update periodically on a “delayed and randomized schedule.”
He also indicated there were some issues with users who connect to the app using Starlink, the satellite network owned by Elon Musk.
Bier told a Canadian user who said their location erroneously showed the United States that “Starlink threw us off” and they were working on a fix. The user speculated their IP address routed to Starlink because it was the closest “hub” to their Canadian location.
WILL IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
Mai said the feature won’t be much of a deterrent for bad actors, who will likely double down on their content despite revelations about their location. That’s not including the fact it would be relatively simple for those accounts to spoof their location and bypass X’s location detection measures.
“Probably this feature will not do anything to help with any of the things that they’re trying to solve,” he said.
“It’s one signal among many signals that could be used internally by people in the trust and safety team to make decisions. But offering it up as a single data point that the public can rely on, on whether to trust an account or not … then no, it’s not very good at all.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 28, 2025.
Marissa Birnie, The Canadian Press
