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.
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