Head of Product at X also changed narratives in real-time, going from "this was never shown" for gray accounts like the DHS', to saying the feature was disabled due to incorrect information from IP ranges changing over time - when you're literally just checking their first IP check-in:
And there was, to everyone's credit, DOZENS of X threads of people torture-testing their browser recordings to confirm whether the information was legit or not:
Maybe THAT screenshot was, but it's not looking good that the information in that screenshot (doctored or not) wasn't exposed.
Also fotoforensics is irrelevant, take a screenshot of an X account's information and you see those black bars. Why would they doctor the "@DHSgov" username otherwise lol?
The same head of product quoted in the sib comment admits that "for a small set of accounts the location data was incorrect". Given what we know about Twitter's relationship with the government and this administration in particular, you're simply left to do with that information what you will.
I personally do not trust Twitter, or the government, very much. I also would not be surprised if some government accounts were created at various embassies around the world or through strategic VPN networks, or if general business is conducted through a darknet-like node system which includes allied endpoints. To me those are more plausible.
after it was reported/recorded, X "fixed" it by making .gov accounts untrackable. So now it doesnt show Israel anymore (and MAGA accounts now have an opportunity to scream fake news)
> This is fake news. Location was not available on any gray check account at any point. Furthermore, the DHS has only shown IPs from the United States since account creation.
- head of product @x
Not to discount the impact of foreign powers over social media but maybe don't spread this misinformation.
Does this make the fact that it showed as Israel, was disabled, and is now "corrected", mean that this feature is good or bad?
Either we can trust all location data all the time, or we can trust none of it. We cannot expect Nikita Bier to swoop in on every suspicious tweet and try to educate us on IP range changes and DNS glitches or whatever.
Furthermore is it more likely that a small set of special accounts seemingly never collected location data on signup, or that for a small number of accounts X simply modified that data post-hoc?
It may have happened. There are already many users saying their "created in" locations were incorrect. Thus the rest of my comment: trust is binary. We can either be 100% certain the data is correct, or we must assume it is never correct.
