X.com Is Gonna Snitch You Out to the Public If You Use a VPN
39 comments
·November 23, 2025cluckindan
_heimdall
Companies requiring that you use potentially poor privacy and security protocols isn't a good thing. Using a VPN doesn't make one a bot or a spammer.
swatcoder
Is that relevant to this disucssion? Maybe I missed something in the articles?
Discolsing where a user may be accessing the site from or that they may be taking extra measures to obscure their identity doesn't sound like it's requiring anybody to do anything. You can still use a VPN, and it can still obscure where you're from. Users just may be be able to better notice that you've done so.
It's just marginally shifting a balance between transparency and privacy in a social environment where those two things are in tension.
rcxdude
Such groups certainly have the resources to use residential proxies to fool such checks.
kardianos
I agree it is a good thing.
These so-called "America First" and "MEGA" accounts have been driving a wedge within the conservative party for a while. Many speculated that these were largely foreign accounts, but it was hard to prove, until now.
Many of the racist "conservative" voices are being shown to be from Iran or other countries.
HeinzStuckeIt
During the 2016 election, it was big in the news that a whole ring of social media accounts and news websites supporting Trump were run out of North Macedonia. And not out of nefarious meddling in American internal affairs, but because the young men involved knew American culture fairly well and knew that riling readers up could bring in profit. How fast that was forgotten.
marginalia_nu
We've known this is a thing for quite some while. The Russians have been running a bunch of these propaganda accounts at least as far back as the 2016 election (see the Mueller report).
input_sh
This is different. There are not ideological in nature, they're looking for that revenue share that can change the life of someone living in a low-cost country.
Being pro-MAGA just happens to be the only thing that works really well (aside from gimmick accounts that repost from subreddits). If Elon suddenly made a 180 into being anti-MAGA and tweaked the algorithm to reflect that, these "bots" would switch their message as well.
jsheard
And then the introduction of revenue sharing added a second incentive - money. Even when users aren't explicitly aiming to propagandize they're still incentivized to post whatever gets the most clicks, and political rage-bait is some of the lowest hanging fruit for click farming.
clanky
Russia doesn't control X moderation policies or algorithms. These accounts have gained the purchase they have because Silicon Valley and Elon Musk specifically now see it as advantageous to sow racial animus and division, and to scapegoat migrants for domestic problems which are in fact caused by elite looting. This is being done to strengthen the status quo regime, not undermine it.
marginalia_nu
I just pointed to evidence this was happening several years before Elon had anything to do with Twitter takeover, all the way back when Obama was still in office.
HeinzStuckeIt
This has long been pretty obvious to anyone using Nitter on desktop. There, you can ctrl-click on usernames to open a new tab, and it is readily obvious from the account’s post history that the people behind so many “authentic American” accounts are not authentic Americans. They make little telltale mistakes in their English, they post single-mindedly about a particular topic like few real people (no matter how much they like political battle) would, the profile pic was obviously created by GAN3-style AI, etc.
It’s fast and trivial to verify on any non-enshittified interface. One of the problems with modern social media is that people are looking at it (usually on their phones) through the platform’s intentionally crippled UI that doesn’t allow quickly opening new views.
isodev
It's not a lot of effort to make them appear as if connecting from the USA without the use of VPN. Giving them a label based on their ... current proxy? ... is not a solution at all.
cluckindan
If it’s not a lot of effort, why aren’t they already doing that?
amelius
Cat and mouse, the next step.
lifestyleguru
I would say that privacy conscious people simply gave up on contributing and commenting. Trolls turned more sophisticated and vicious as they are compensated and oftentimes threatened to do so.
webdevver
actually incredibly bullish for america.
everybody wants to be american. nobody with agency is rooting for anything other than the US. seriously, if youre not topblasting the S&P, i dont know what to tell you. theres like the entire 2nd and 3rd world combined waiting for their paycheque to come in every month so they can spend it on the US.
by 2100, we are gonna have a graveyard of langauges that nobody speaks anymore.
MattPalmer1086
You think foreign interference in your politics means everyone wants to be American? That's a very, very optimistic view of what's going on.
webdevver
[flagged]
danillonunes
They don't care about being American. They want the sweet American dollars that X is paying for engagement. They figured out the MAGA crowd is the easiest to engage, so that's where they go.
jofzar
I'm going to be honest, I have no issue with this.
For anyone that it matters for, they won't care it shows they are using a vpn and for anyone trying to be deceitful using a vpn then it will downplay their credibility.
isodev
I don't like the idea of linking VPN usage with something shady or illegal. Privacy is a human right, and knowing that I'm using a VPN or not doesn't change how "authentic" or truthful the post is.
ACCount37
The crusade against VPNs is grating to me too. But as long as X is not actually restricting VPN users in any way?
"A guy that posts popular incendiary takes about US politics like it's his job is routing through VPNs and his real location is unknown" might be valuable information to the public.
gishh
Whatever right to privacy that may exist goes out the window when you’re posting on the World Wide Web.
lpapez
Slowly but surely turning into 4chan /pol/, now with country flags too!
webdevver
that happened like 3 years ago THOUGH
TruffleLabs
"“When you read content on X, you should be able to verify its authenticity. This is critical to getting a pulse on important issues happening in the world,” posted Nikita Bier, Head of Product at X, back on October 14, 2025."
That feature of showing where an account was created was on for a bit and then turned off... it highlights that many accounts implying they are in the USA are actually not and probably not who they claim to be.
locknitpicker
> That feature of showing where an account was created was on for a bit and then turned off... it highlights that many accounts implying they are in the USA are actually not and probably not who they claim to be.
I recall that Twitter had a serious account takeover problem which reached the point that eve high profile accounts were hijacked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Twitter_account_hijacking
Of course owners of dead accounts don't complain.
The way Elon Musk's Twitter decided to render blue checkmarks useless leads me to believe this is by design.
Brajeshwar
My account is a simple personal account with less than 3,000 followers. It does show a warning stating that I might be using a VPN. I do use AdGuard with the Mask IP setting set to a random number, and the DNS is set to Mullvad’s DNS.
singpolyma3
This is a dick move, but let's not present VPNs add much in the way of privacy or security on average.
DarkmSparks
will they also advertise the service provider being used or will you have to ask?
Because I suspect "warning this person isnt an idiot" doesnt turn out to be the warning they expect.
cyanydeez
Or theres a lot of people who like to troll and propagandize americans for nationalism and racism
marginalia_nu
Yeah. This feature seems mostly fine, and fairly effective at highlighting troll farms.
There's been a whole slew of the most prolific accounts that were spamming inflamatory political propaganda, ostensibly targeting Europe or the US that have been reveal to operate out of India, Pakistan, south east asia, etc.
ChocolateGod
X has a pandemic of people pretending to be Americans (or Westerners in general) saying edgy or controversial things in order to encourage engagement and subsequently earn money from X's program. This is why this feature was added.
IMHO the program itself just encourages misinformation and should be scrapped.
jmclnx
I do not use twitter, so do not care.
But if you use a fake name and fake email, which people should be using on twitter, who cares.
Also if you self host your VPN, how would twitter know. Looks like only people using a commercial VPN will be flagged.
jschoe
Self-hosting a VPN is not entirely straightforward. If you rent a server from Hetzner, for example, and your IP address is linked to Hetzner, it's obvious that it's not a genuine residential IP address.
What you need is a VPN that provides a genuine residential IP address. It's possible to do this, but not easy to set up for everyone.
ACCount37
Websites can still guess that an IP is non-residential. There's a difference between an IP at Comcast and an IP at DigitalOcean. This takes some effort to work around.
CommanderData
Wasn't there something about DHS's account originating in Israel? Suprised it's not being discussed here.
This is a good thing.
Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls
https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-influencers-accidenta...
”Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria.
In one example, the account MAGANationX—with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We The People”—is actually based in Eastern Europe.”