Beware the hidden danger of X marking the spot

A new feature lets users see where tweets are sent from, but there are some major drawbacks, writes Xavier Greenwood

- Xavier Greenwood

A feature has been rolled out on X that shows the location of accounts on the service. It would be reasonable to see this as positive.

While we generally believe transparency is good, people have proved chameleonic on social media. By changing your user name, deleting old posts and updating your profile picture, you can adopt a fresh identity. Now X users can feel more certain their interlocutors are who they say they are. But it remains a feeling, and false confidence does more harm than good.

I was the producer of the 2024 podcast Who Trolled Amber?, which investigated how the narrative around the legal battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard was crafted and manipulated online.