X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

Foreign-Run Accounts and Engagement Incentives

• Many comments see the “US” accounts showing foreign locations as unsurprising: if you pay for engagement, people anywhere will produce whatever drives the most anger and clicks.
• Several describe these operators as the modern equivalent of “gold farmers”: low‑wage workers abroad running high‑engagement political personas for ad revenue, affiliate links, X’s revenue share, or direct donations—not necessarily for ideology.
• Others frame them as organized astroturf operations: call‑center‑style teams, sometimes plausibly tied to foreign intelligence or PR shops, amplifying divisive US content on both left and right.

Technical Implementation and Reliability

• Speculation that initial “country-of-origin” was inferred from historical IPs against current geolocation databases, which can be wrong when address blocks are later reassigned.
• Users report anomalies (e.g., accounts marked as Japan or Costa Rica without clear reason), suggesting multiple signals: IP, GPS, carrier SIM, App Store country, browser vs app, and possibly ad-targeting data.
• VPNs, residential proxies, and cloud VMs are seen as easy workarounds; some note X flags suspected VPN use, but this is at best another noisy signal.
• There’s disagreement over whether the feature was briefly rolled back, then relaunched in a modified form (current location vs original), or is simply inconsistent—status is described as in flux and not fully trustworthy.

Propaganda vs Grift

• One camp emphasizes “grey zone warfare,” especially from Russia, as part of a broader pattern of online influence and laundering operations.
• Another argues most visible activity is commercial, coming heavily from India, Nigeria and other low-income countries, with any state influence piggybacking on the same mechanisms.
• Some warn that focusing narrowly on Russia ignores other states and corporate astroturfing using similar tactics.

Identity Verification and a ‘Real’ Town Square

• Multiple commenters float US-citizen or residency‑verified “town square” platforms (passport/ID verification, external identity providers, strong anti‑sock‑puppet rules) to restore authenticity.
• Others doubt this would solve manipulation for long; adversaries could still pay verified locals, and real‑name systems risk chilling speech and turning into LinkedIn‑style self‑branding.

Outrage, Truth, and Social Media Ecology

• Strong agreement that modern platforms optimize for time‑on‑site, and anger is the most reliable engagement driver.
• The Plato’s cave analogy recurs: X (and social media generally) is described as a shadow‑play mistaken for reality, with users shocked to discover how much of it is fake or foreign‑run.
• There’s a long sub‑thread on whether AI and better curation can ever tilt information ecosystems toward truth, or whether structural incentives will keep privileging emotionally charged, low‑factuality content.