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[Hari Seldon]

Can you implement a blanket filter so you never see anyone except from the country of your choice? If so I might actually use social media again.

 

[RJMacready73]

surely the solution would be to enable some sort of feature that simply blocks certain countries and users who use VPNs, i would have absolutely zero interest in hearing the views or opinions of anyone from the likes of Russia, China, India, Nigeria, Pakistan etc

 

[Hypereides]

Why do foreigners pretend to be American when trying to influence Americans on social media?

(...)

The west is a largely composed of high-trust and open societies. Meanwhile select countries in the east are being built on low-trust and closed principles. They see the western cohesion as both a weakness and a threat, for a variety of reasons, to themselves and want to "prove" the legitimacy of their governance while attempting to undermine, destabilize and overload the cohesion in their western counterpart.

They want ordinary people, such as yourself, to be at each others throats and nudge your mindset in the direction of authoritarian rule "not being so bad". Even though, those same fragile authoritarian systems are upheld through excessive force, rife with corruption, stripping off human rights and utilize underhanded tactics on the western industries to keep themselves, and their technological advancements, afloat.

All these "foreigners" posing as "American citizens" are usually designated troll farms to fuel the fire, sort of speak, incentivized and sponsored by external sources. They're exploiting the high-trust and openness within our societies to spread vitriol, on both sides.

That's just my 2 cents anyway.

Foundations of Geopolitics published in 1997

• Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States and Canada to fuel instability and seperatism against neoliberal globalist Western hegemony, such as, for instance, provoke "Afro-America racists" to create severe backlash against the rotten political state of affairs in the current present-day system of the United States and Canada. Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."

This is worth a read too:

Russia’s Shadow War Against the West

Russia is conducting a violent and escalating campaign of sabotage and subversion against European and U.S. targets in Europe led by Russian military intelligence, according to a new CSIS database. The number of Russian attacks nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024.

www.csis.org

 

[near]

Can you implement a blanket filter so you never see anyone except from the country of your choice? If so I might actually use social media again.

You can use the following tab to display posts only from accounts you're following.

 

[Fbh]

Other than the bit in the OP about them disabling the feature to whitelist some accounts before re-enabling it, I'd call this the opposite of backfiring.
Now, if Elon actually cared about bots and propaganda it would be great to have a feature where you can block accounts from certain countries (+ ones using VPN and those that choose not to disclose their location).

I get ads in the freakin YouTube app on iOS that show ai generated pictures of the canadian prime minister and other politicians in handcuffs or whatever and the ads are always from India. I complain about the blatantly fake ad and I get no response from YouTube about it.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was getting tons of ads on youtube with an AI version of our president pushing some crypto scam. Apparently the government complained to Google and they got removed, but now I'm seeing basically the same ad but with an AI version of a well known local millionaire.

 

[near]

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

There are many things I like about the new X/Twitter, but one of the biggest problems is the monetization.

Stop paying people for engagements, that has had the worst effect. Most of the other changes are good, but paying for engagement leads to trash attention seekers everywhere. Don't make it more like TikTok, that's the worst direction to go.

 

[SJRB]

Dunking on larping accounts is my new favourite pastime.

All you have to do is post a screenshot where the account is based. Super easy, barely an inconvenience.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Yep was real, someone got access to the feature before it went global and was reporting on it and others followed up.

X said it was in 'error' must of been the only account in error then

No it was not real. There were two accounts.

The verified government one said United States as it should. The other was a fake non-verified account. In current year, we still pretend verification status isn't a thing?

 

[Yoda]

I'd love the option to browse a US only feed or the ability to filter out select countries that have a high % of ppl faking their identity.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Any false positives yet? Seems like something that could be wrong a fair bit? Actually asking as I have no idea how this stuff works.

 

[Mistake]

Seems "account based in" can vary wildly if someone is using web access. I would only consider this useful if using a mobile app

 

[jshackles]

Any false positives yet? Seems like something that could be wrong a fair bit? Actually asking as I have no idea how this stuff works.

When you connect to a web server (any web server, not just X's web servers) they are getting your public IP address. Public IP addresses are cataloged by location (country, region, city) when they are assigned. These databases are public - so you connect to X from an IP address that's assigned to Russia and X assumes you're Russian. They have an extra layer here as well, as they have different versions of the X mobile app for each region's iOS / Play store, so additionally they can see which version of the mobile app you've connected from to further verify your country of origin.

Using a VPN can mask your IP address, and make it appear that you're connecting from a different country. However, most public VPN nodes are also using IP addresses that are flagged / categorized as such, so when doing this to mask your location X can also denote that you might be doing something shady (most VPN providers have servers in lots of different countries, and the only reason you'd typically connect outside your own would be to circumvent something like this or to watch cooler shows on Netflix).

So a "false positive", in this case, would be someone who set up their own private non-disclosed VPN to post on X while optionally tunnelling to a foreign app store to get the X app from that same foreign country to further fool them. This wouldn't be something you'd just accidentally do. If you're a MAGA mom from Texas, but X shows you're from Bangladesh - you're either in Bangladesh or have gone to great lengths to make X think you are.

 

[STARSBarry]

Had a look through the Pro Brexit accounts of yesteryear and yeah it alerts you if a VPN has been detected.

Dude stopped using this before the porn ban, so its picking up when he was posting.

 

[SlimySnake]

The real problem is the algorithm that pushed these grifters on us. Especially after Elon took over and completely fucked up the verification process. now all of a sudden these nobodies became somebodies and the more the algorithm pushed them, the more popular they became.

This was a huge concern when putin was meddling with the 2016 election, and facebook and twitter just failed to stop all the misinformation despite admitting that there were a lot of russian bots/troll farms sewing division. This was around the same time Brexit was going on as well.

So none of this is new. What's new is that Elon has pushed angry cunts on us and these solo guys figured out a way to game the algorithm to make some quick cash. At the expense of sewing divisions in our society. Making everyone hate each other. I honestly got sick of how nasty Twitter had become because of guys like them, and its not just politics. it's gaming. It's women vs men. It's definitely a bunch of grifters in the U.S and the west who have figured out that rage bait is very profitable. In real life, most people are civil with each other. People who disagree with politics of their neighbors, friends and relatives dont act like this cunts on twitter. People generally get along. But you go on twitter and these same grifters make it out to be end of civilization as we know it.

 

[Nocty]

all of the pro-israel IDF accounts being from india is fucking hilarious

Theres one guy in particular that pretends he is an israeli but has been caught multiple times for being an indian living in india. Who is paying them I wonder

 

[Stitch]

 

[Stitch]

Who is paying them I wonder

Elon

With enough likes, replies, retweets and all that stuff you can get money from Elon

There is a reason your X feed has turned more toxic. Have you heard of ‘engagement farming’?

Provocative and socially divisive posts from paid users are getting more traction due to changes in policy under Elon Musk, experts say.

scroll.in

 

[Forsete]

This is too damed funny.

 

[ADiTAR]

This is groundbreaking feature that I hope they'll do, it really exposes bad actors.

I think it also exposed how some of these get so many followers by getting previous handles or something. I'm not really sure.

 

[Kacho]

The memes are on point as always

 

[Unknown Soldier]

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

that guy's been everywhere

even Myst III: Exile

 

[AJUMP23]

Accurate

 

[DKehoe]

Accurate

How come it says the country for some but with others it's more of a general area? The person/people running the account regularly posting from different locations?