X to combat bot problem by showing more info about users
(2025/10/15)
- Reference: 1760565509
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/10/15/twitter_x_bot_show_user_info/
- Source link:
In an effort to help human readers figure out whether they can trust the source of information (or opinion) posted on X, Elon Musk’s social network plans to add a new "About this account" screen with metadata from each user, including their location, how long they’ve had the account, and how many times they've changed their usernames.
In a [1]post on Tuesday , X Head of Product Nikita Bier showed a picture of the proposed information screen and announced that we’d start seeing it available on the profiles of X staff members as soon as next week.
[2]
About this account feature on X as shown by Nikita Bier - Click to enlarge
“When you read content on X, you should be able to verify its authenticity,” Bier wrote. “This is critical to getting a pulse on important issues happening in the world.”
In the screenshot, you can see that the “About this account” page shows the date the user joined X, the number of times the username changed and the date of last change, the location the account is “based in,” and a "Connected via" field that shows how the user is getting onto X.
Bier’s post generated a series of follow-up comments, some of which he responded to with more details about the service. He said that users would be able to opt out of sharing their details using privacy settings, but that their choice would be noted on their profiles.
[3]
The X exec also said that he would try to help users whose governments penalize certain forms of speech by showing their regions rather than the specific countries they come from. However, he made clear that he was primarily talking about the EU, which has laws against hate speech, and not dictatorships that penalize pro-democracy expression.
[4]
[5]
“In EU countries where speech can have penalties, we should substitute country for region—to preserve their right of free expression,” he wrote.
[6]X marks the drop for European users
[7]UK minister suggests government could ditch 'dangerous' Elon Musk's X
[8]X tells the French police 'non' to its request for algorithmic data
[9]xAI's Grok has no place in US federal government, say advocacy groups
Bier also said that he and his team are experimenting with different levels of device detail to show. The screenshot shows someone “connected via United States App Store,” but it remains unclear whether you’ll know if someone was on an iPhone, an iPad, an Android handset, a Windows PC, a MacBook, or a Linux box.
It’s hard to know the exact number of bots that infest X, but consensus suggests it’s significant. CHEQ, a firm that analyzes fake traffic, reported that during the 2024 Super Bowl, [10]75 percent of traffic X sent to advertisers it monitors appeared to come from bots. A [11]2023 study published in the Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics estimated that about 14 percent of the Twitter respondents in US political conversations were bots with that number shrinking to a still-high 10 percent in the UK. A [12]March 2025 study in Scientific Reports measured the percentage of bots in different types of discussions from politics and entertainment and found the numbers between 15 and 44 percent.
Knowing how long someone has been using X and where they logged in from would be a signal that they are not a bot. Then again, someone could probably give a bot access to a long-established account and let it post from there.
[13]
We reached out to X for comment on the new “About this account” feature and will update this article if we receive a reply. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://x.com/nikitabier/status/1978132382868988310
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/10/15/about-account.jpg
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aPBt2HKSyOPwH7CFouSj6wAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aPBt2HKSyOPwH7CFouSj6wAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aPBt2HKSyOPwH7CFouSj6wAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/01/x_accounts_europe_drop/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/29/uk_government_x_twiter/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/x_french_police/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/29/xais_grok_has_no_place/
[10] http://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-elon-musk-bots-fake-traffic
[11] https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-emnlp.954/
[12] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-96372-1
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aPBt2HKSyOPwH7CFouSj6wAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
In a [1]post on Tuesday , X Head of Product Nikita Bier showed a picture of the proposed information screen and announced that we’d start seeing it available on the profiles of X staff members as soon as next week.
[2]
About this account feature on X as shown by Nikita Bier - Click to enlarge
“When you read content on X, you should be able to verify its authenticity,” Bier wrote. “This is critical to getting a pulse on important issues happening in the world.”
In the screenshot, you can see that the “About this account” page shows the date the user joined X, the number of times the username changed and the date of last change, the location the account is “based in,” and a "Connected via" field that shows how the user is getting onto X.
Bier’s post generated a series of follow-up comments, some of which he responded to with more details about the service. He said that users would be able to opt out of sharing their details using privacy settings, but that their choice would be noted on their profiles.
[3]
The X exec also said that he would try to help users whose governments penalize certain forms of speech by showing their regions rather than the specific countries they come from. However, he made clear that he was primarily talking about the EU, which has laws against hate speech, and not dictatorships that penalize pro-democracy expression.
[4]
[5]
“In EU countries where speech can have penalties, we should substitute country for region—to preserve their right of free expression,” he wrote.
[6]X marks the drop for European users
[7]UK minister suggests government could ditch 'dangerous' Elon Musk's X
[8]X tells the French police 'non' to its request for algorithmic data
[9]xAI's Grok has no place in US federal government, say advocacy groups
Bier also said that he and his team are experimenting with different levels of device detail to show. The screenshot shows someone “connected via United States App Store,” but it remains unclear whether you’ll know if someone was on an iPhone, an iPad, an Android handset, a Windows PC, a MacBook, or a Linux box.
It’s hard to know the exact number of bots that infest X, but consensus suggests it’s significant. CHEQ, a firm that analyzes fake traffic, reported that during the 2024 Super Bowl, [10]75 percent of traffic X sent to advertisers it monitors appeared to come from bots. A [11]2023 study published in the Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics estimated that about 14 percent of the Twitter respondents in US political conversations were bots with that number shrinking to a still-high 10 percent in the UK. A [12]March 2025 study in Scientific Reports measured the percentage of bots in different types of discussions from politics and entertainment and found the numbers between 15 and 44 percent.
Knowing how long someone has been using X and where they logged in from would be a signal that they are not a bot. Then again, someone could probably give a bot access to a long-established account and let it post from there.
[13]
We reached out to X for comment on the new “About this account” feature and will update this article if we receive a reply. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://x.com/nikitabier/status/1978132382868988310
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/10/15/about-account.jpg
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aPBt2HKSyOPwH7CFouSj6wAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aPBt2HKSyOPwH7CFouSj6wAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aPBt2HKSyOPwH7CFouSj6wAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/01/x_accounts_europe_drop/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/29/uk_government_x_twiter/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/x_french_police/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/29/xais_grok_has_no_place/
[10] http://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-elon-musk-bots-fake-traffic
[11] https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-emnlp.954/
[12] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-96372-1
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aPBt2HKSyOPwH7CFouSj6wAAAU0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The whole platform is compromised
Winkypop
It’s just bots screaming at trolls across a giant void.
AVR
I guess the time the account has existed may be a clue as to whether it's a bot, but it's hardly definitive either way. None of the other info presented looks relevant.
Another security feature in X
Yes, this new idea will work well, until it doesn't...