Continent Tag In X’s ‘About This Account’ Feature Alarms Users Over Bangladesh, Pakistan Psyops

X’s new transparency tool reveals account origins, but journalists say region-only tags let bad actors hide. (IMAGE: REUTERS)

Indian journalists on X welcomed the platform’s new ‘About This Account’ feature but pointed out that allowing users to list only a region or continent may help misinformation networks hide their real location. They argued that without mandatory country-level tagging, malicious accounts can mask their identity and avoid scrutiny.

Journalists Abhijit Majumdar, Sreemoy Talukdar and Vikram Chandra said Bangladeshi and Pakistani handles that frequently post anti-India content will now be able to fly under the radar by choosing these broad geographic location categories.

“There are scores of accounts that were spreading anti-India hate, got identified as Pakistani accounts, and then quickly changed their setting to ‘South Asia’,” Chandra said.

“This defeats the whole purpose. I understand the need to protect users in truly autocratic states like North Korea or China, but this feature should be limited to those countries,” he added.

During Operation Sindoor, Indian officials said there was an intense wave of online misinformation pushed by Pakistan-based accounts. Government briefings described it as “an aggressive, coordinated effort” to distort details of the operation, recycle old or AI-generated combat footage and circulate false claims about Indian losses. PIB and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said most of the misleading posts originated outside India, with many handles geolocated to Pakistan or linked to Pakistani networks.

The government’s official account of Op Sindoor says India was hit by “an aggressive campaign launched by Pakistan – full of lies and misinformation,” aimed at distorting facts and reclaiming “lost narrative ground”.

“Alongside military operations, a fierce information war has been ongoing online. Following the commencement of Operation SINDOOR, India found itself targeted by an aggressive campaign launched by Pakistan- full of lies and misinformation. The aim was to distort the truth, mislead the global public and reclaim lost narrative ground through a storm of misinformation,” the Press Information Bureau had said at the time.

X now shows key details on a user’s profile, accessed via the “Date Joined” tab. These include when the account was created, how many times the username has changed, how the app was downloaded, and the country or region the account is (or appears to be) based in, according to TechCrunch.