It was in part fueled by Twitter's idea of paying content creators, which made the whole thing an engagement bait party, it gave an economic incentive to countries with cheap and idle workforces to work 9 to 5 on posting whatever got likes without even understanding it, even it was political.
Or botnets to get residential IPs
Forcing these orgs to pay foe their propaganda is significant.
And once theyre in vpns, those are fewer IPs to ban.
Is this a default fallback because they have no useful signal (the account is a decade old)?
Anyway, if it is this unreliable even in a very simple case, I do not see the point of trusting it to expose bot farms in Russia or India.
This kind of content still gets a lot of engagement and can be pretty profitable for people in third world countries.
I think it’s good that has been exposed. There is a difference between me, as an Aussie, commenting on affairs in other countries, vs straight up exploiting peoples fears by pretending to be left or right wing, in the US, and sharing content to further fan the flames between people on the political spectrum.
You could argue they can still post this content, but it’s already pretty clear people tend to disregard or ignore this kind of rage bait when they realise the users are disingenuous.
How does monetization work in practice? You set up a twitter account saying that trans prisoners should get taxpayer funded care, and then what? You drop a link to your gofundme? Shill some betterhelp affiliate links?
The US has shoved so much of its internal politics and culture over the whole world's throat, and dominates so much of the internet, and US-inspired regional politics in a lot of the world, that many people legitimately get caught up and chime in on US hot topics even the culture war too
But the bigger problem is that it won't work. They'll just set up PoPs in country. The law has never stopped criminals. They are criminals after all, breaking the law is a given.
If it did work a ban would give those countries a big kick up the ### to actually do something about it. Many countries just let it happen because of corruption. Sometimes something is done like recently in Myanmar but it's very rare and usually just for show.
There are obviously a lot of other issues with social media sites like Reddit or HN but imagine how different local community subreddits would be if there was some way to know that the person you're talking to actually has some personal stake in the community and people there.
Personally I'd still want to slum it up on the non-regulated social media sites but I'd post on the pseudo-anonymous community sites and take what others have to say more seriously on there.
By paying a little bit of real cash money for hitting engagement stats, X created an incentive for people in other countries to fake the most engaging content they can find—which on X is right-wing rage bait. It has high emotional content and X’s algorithm was tweaked to prefer it.
It’s no different from the incentives that produced a flood of AI slop on Facebook, as thoroughly reported by 404 Media:
One could discuss things without the usual silly accusations of sexism or racism or ageism or whatever because no-one knew the characteristics of the other interlocutors.
X now broadcasting everyone's location and people self-announcing their pronouns/race/age whatever are backward steps and make it way to easy for the silly people who want to be victims rather than argue the facts of an issue.
The reality of "nobody knows you're a dog" is that the world takes seriously a precocious 14 year old even if her ideas are completely absurd, provided she has 100K followers.
Many of the world's most influential minds are dogs now; the masses have trouble distinguishing between reason and dog shit.
Well, if she has 100K followers, then clearly there is something to her ideas. You might not like it, but 100K others do.
In most other matters, it is invalid, unless we're reckless in how we interpret "something to it".
Like, there was something to the practice of slavery: it was popular in the South! ...and yet I'm comfortable making a value judgement about it.
If the point of the internet is to popularize Flat Earth Theory or whatever, then I have a feeling humanity would be better off without the internet.
Though it's commerce that really broke it.
In the least, showing locations (which can be faked), or implying that someone in certain geographies is more legitimate, is incorrect. If someone lives near me and is commenting on some local issue, they can still post fake AI-generated images, or spread misinformation, or mislead with missing context, or whatever. Those problems still exist, and the need to consider the information on its own merits still exists. So what do you really gain?
Or it could been seen as a pro-active way of eliminate the annoying "a/s/l" spam from them yonder days of internet chatrooms/forums.
> the silly people who want to be victims
Not really a great example to showcase how to advocate one "argue the facts of an issue"
But even when I sign to too a web shop or whatever I don't give them my real DOB because they have no legit reason to want to have it. I just randomise it and store it in my password manager.
There's an impossible balance to be found between total transparency and not having to reveal all truths about your being, such as your species.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
Although back then it was also kinda taboo so they were usually banned everywhere (not just online). Which was great IMO.
Not very much later of course came the masses and the emergence of awful platforms.
Edit: or actually, whatever predated freenode (OPN?) because I forgot freenode was a 2000s change.
I was thinking more about Usenet which was very helpful in my experience. When it was still a discussion forum and not a place for warez.
Though it goes for society as a whole. It's very hostile and confrontational now. I tend to avoid most mainstream situations now. I only frequent a few websites that are still ok (like this one), some fediverse, some cosplay and when going out I only go to specific LGBT-positive parties where a "rave culture" still exists (think the love everybody kinda thing). I'm done with this tough guy act that most males think is normal now.
The obvious issues: lots of people use VPNs for privacy reasons, even if they’re not in a country with serious risks from governments. Or they use the Internet while traveling and post from other locations. Or they may engage in discussions that affect them even if they don’t live in a particular area. Maybe they lived there previously or are going to move there.
But also, this has opened a whole new way to dismiss people and their ideas based on location. For example, I see lots of comments on X that have become outright racist, against people allegedly posting from China, or Pakistan, or India. People with politics on all sides are using the location info to claim their opponents are falling for foreign propaganda - the left people are posting examples of right accounts that are foreign, and right people are posting examples of left accounts that are foreign. But what’s common is when these posts are made, it encourages and brings out the most vile attacks against people of different ethnicities or countries.
> X’s recent bold decision, led by Head of Product Nikita Bier, to add country labels to accounts reflects an important shift: a recognition that geographic transparency is crucial context to help users understand whether a post is a firsthand account or distant commentary, whether it reflects genuine local sentiment or coordinated foreign messaging.
Nikita is wrong about this. The location is not transparency that is helping people understand whether a post is firsthand or distant. Most things can be discussed well without location playing a hand in what is being discussed. The actual real life usage of this is to perform shallow dismissals and racist attacks. Not to ascertain the veracity of some claim. Besides that, how would location help? Anything can be faked with AI. Even if someone genuinely lives in a particular location, they can fake content, or mislead readers, or spread misinformation.
I’ll also say I am not impressed by Nikita Bier, who is apparently leading X’s product. The way he communicates on social media makes him look like an immature troll rather than someone serious (example: https://xcancel.com/nikitabier/status/1991723005454741995). I guess it is fitting with the image carried by Elon and Twitter/X these days, though.
This was such a wonderful & amazing move. It's a small move! But going from having nothing to having even a small breadcrumb of context gives users some understanding of the network around them with: at least it's something.
Thanks Sean & Zach for writing this up. Founder/executive types, putting their word down about what a phase change this was, from everyone just being utterly lost & adrift.
Eventually it was Embraced, Extended and, Extinguished by Elon.