Hari Seldon
Member
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.
X launches "About this account" feature, Backfires
- Thread starter YCoCg
- Start date
RJMacready73
Simps for Amouranth
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
Member
The west is 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.
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.
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near
Gold Member
You can use the following tab to display posts only from accounts you're following.
Fbh
Member
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).
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.
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).
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.
ResurrectedContrarian
Suffers with mild autism
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.
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.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
No it was not real. There were two accounts.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
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?
Trogdor1123
Member
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.
jshackles
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
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
Gold Member
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
Flashless at the Golden Globes
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.
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.
Stitch
Member
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
Kacho
Gold Member
The memes are on point as always
Unknown Soldier
Member
ResurrectedContrarian
Suffers with mild autism
DKehoe
Member
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?
SJRB
Gold Member
that guy's been everywhere
even Myst III: Exile
I did some research and it turns out this guy is something called an "actor".
Reizo Ryuu
Member
no, you can just select either country, or region.
Unknown?
Member
The world fell for it, not just Americans.
Unknown?
Member
Nothing's perfect but the verification process was fucked up before Elon. It was being used by authoritarian elitists to push their opinions as fact.
Elon didn't push anything, Twitter was always shit.
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Wildebeest
Member
People were told again and again that there has been and still is a huge amount of people in overseas troll factories posing as "horseshoe" type political activists on social media with fake accounts. Horseshoe being the sort of political extremist who says they are the "real" right wing or "real" left wing but is basically so far down the side of the horseshoe that they meet again in the middle. I guess that knowledge just doesn't sink in for some people or they don't believe the messenger.
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StreetsofBeige
Member
I say leave it on permanently.
Who cares if someone wants to convince the crowd they are going through a proxy to mess up the location. That's on them to prove to the world, not viewers. Most people wont use that, so the location will be accurate.
Hilarious. Leave to Elon to always make people look stupid.
Who cares if someone wants to convince the crowd they are going through a proxy to mess up the location. That's on them to prove to the world, not viewers. Most people wont use that, so the location will be accurate.
Hilarious. Leave to Elon to always make people look stupid.
StreetsofBeige
Member
The lower the price (especially free), the more losers and low browers you'll always get. And for something like email and social media accounts where it involves narratives, bots, politics etc... you'll get shit ton of morons using it.
It's like comparing people at McDonalds and a dollar store vs. the people at a nicer restaurant and Williams Sonoma. You'll always get the messed up people making great social media clips being drunk or punching workers behind the counter at McDonalds or Dennys vs nicer places where none of that goes on.
If any social media site wants to thin out the bad accounts, just charge $100/yr for everyone. You'd lose lots of users, but guaranteed the people remaining will skew more to good natured people not dicking around with fake accounts, trolling accounts or their 20th multi user account. Probably all the bots would go away too.
But the business model is to max out as many users as possible, bot or not, good profile or not. So it becomes a slummy site to use, although still hilarious to watch the stupidity.
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MaestroMike
Gold Member
Now scammers know who to target and who not to waste time on. They can start making lists
RCX
Member
Dunking on larping accounts is tight!
Toons
Member
That tweet is *extremely* rich coming from matt walsh
So many commenters on both sides of the US political aisle are foreign accounts, this shit is hilarious in the saddest ways.
"Conscious philosopher"
And they're pretentious af too!
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Baemono
Member
Which is funny cause they pay a lot to make sure hate their neighbours, but they don't really succeed to make people hate Ukrainians.No, just the Russians.
Baemono
Member
Don't forget the time Elon fought with the community notes
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
I'm just laughing that for over 10 years, only "the Russians" were blamed, when we kept saying... wait for it... it's EVERYONE!
Russia, China, and Iran lead the way in anti-Western subversive activities, with Russia itself actively using and employing proxies within countries to physically cause social unrest, as seen recently in France. A number of others are involved because the work is outsourced to cheap labour.
So the Russians are and should be disproportionately blamed for this.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
France has much larger issues they did to themselves, than deflecting to Russians.
Hypereides
Member
You shouldn't downplay and handwave away "the Russians" involvement like this. The Putin regime has a repeated pattern of conniving methods that have gotten hard to ignore.
The Russian state has intertwined its intelligence agencies operations with the mafia. There's an abundance of evidence and material that substantiate this.
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DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Nobody is downplaying, but they are also a nice scapegoat to deflect from the damage Europe is doing themselves for other masters.
"Russia, Russia, Russia, the masses continue to cry out under their burkas and hijabs as the 'call to prayer' plays across their conquered lands; aided by their very own traitors in power."
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Hypereides
Member
"Scapegoat"... those two do not have to be mutually exclusive. Sure, there could be talk about some self-inflicted damage. But, to just nonchalantly deflect any Russian tampering because of that appears weirdly illogical.
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