Now X marks your location

Will X’s new location feature serve as a boon or a bane for its users?

- SREYA DEB

SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORN X is rolling out a new feature for users, which displays the location of the owner of the profile.

While the feature is still undergoing corrections and fixes post the rollout, many have concerns with the consequences. Nikita Bier, head of product at X, had announced the impending launch of this feature near the end of October this year, saying that it would first be rolled out for accounts of X employees only, and then to a wider reach. The location display feature has been showing up on the profiles of more and more X users by the day since its launch on November 21, with X's Bier saying that the intention is to reduce activity of bots, and to allow users to verify the validity of other accounts. Bier also revealed that in the near future of this feature, X will also flag certain locations as dubious or unreliable, if it finds that the users have used VPNs at the time of creating the account.

Until now, once enabled, X has displayed the country of the user or the origin of a user. With the new feature, it is possible to pinpoint locations to the state or even city the profile is operating in. Further, apart from the location, the profiles will also display how many times the username has been changed.