X has long been a hotbed for fake accounts, bots and other scammy behavior. Many of those dynamics have been exacerbated by the rise of paid verification, which boosts the visibility of anyone who pays for a subscription. Now, the company is running a small experiment that could help users better identify potentially suspicious accounts.
The service is starting to test a new “about this account” feature that will provide details about when an account joined the platform, where the person running it is based, how many times the username has been changed and how the account is connected to X. The feature is a lot like the “page transparency” information on Facebook, which provides similar details about when a given page was created and where the people running it are based.
“When you read content on X, you should be able to verify its authenticity,” X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, shared in a post about the change. “This is critical to getting a pulse on important issues happening in the world.”
If fully rolled out, this type of feature could help people on X understand a lot of common scams and other deceptive behavior on the platform. For example, scammers often change the handle of a recently compromised account in order to trick an account’s existing followers. And understanding the location of an account could help users root out people lying about their identity.
However, it sounds like it could be some time before the feature is implemented in a way that could be broadly useful. Bier said that initially X will show this info on “a handful of profiles of X team members” — most of whom already have an official “X” badge on their profiles — in order to get feedback on the change.
