X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, briefly rolled out a highly anticipated feature late Friday night that enabled users to see the country of origin of any account on the platform.

The update appeared under a new ” About this account” page, accessible by clicking on a user’s join date on their profile.

Unlike the editable “location” field on a user’s profile, the new tool revealed the country an account was actually posting based on the IP address.

The aim, as suggested by the initial response of the X user,s was to reduce misinformation and foreign influence by providing better disclosure on the identity of the persons behind different accounts.

The feature also displayed the country where an account was originally registered, offering insight into both current and past activity.

Sudden Removal Raises Questions

The feature was quietly launched; however, despite the positive response, it was removed a few hours later.

X did not make any formal announcement, but early clues came directly from Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, who had hinted at the tool several weeks earlier.

Bier has reacted to some users claiming that the country information on their profiles was incorrect.

In one notable case, a user’s location appeared as Korea, despite the user not being based there.

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Starlink and VPNs Blamed for Inaccuracies

Bier did recognize the issue, responding: “Fixing this now. Looks like Starlink Threw Us Off.”

In a different response, he gave the reason that VPN was in use during the creation of an account, which led to the wrong join-location data.

“We identified the problem: It looks like you used a VPN to register your account in ’22,” he said.

Adding that X would introduce an indicator showing when a VPN likely influenced the join-date location.

According to Bier, fixes to the inaccuracies would be released within days, with updates arriving on the web first, followed by Android and iOS.

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Feature Expected to Return Soon

Based on Bier’s remarks, it appears X removed the feature temporarily to solve these problems, with plans to reinstate it once location detection becomes more reliable.

The transparency tool was popular among many users who said it could dishearten foreign actors and bots, as well as well-organized misinformation campaigns.

Facebook already has a similar feature on Pages, which discloses the countries where the page administrators are located, but not the profiles themselves.

For now, the X community waits to see when and how Musk’s platform brings the feature back.

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X has launched a new feature showing countries where accounts are based and other details. PHOTO/Screenshit X.