Recently, Elon Musk announced that his Twitter/X platform would be revealing the location data that every user posts from. People have anticipated this day for some time, as they suspected many far-right accounts are actually foreign individuals cosplaying as Western reactionaries to farm clicks:

Inevitable West slipped up again and quickly deleted it. pic.twitter.com/t4kmk5pPZU

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) June 11, 2025

Now, people are starting to see the location data, and as expected, many of the site’s most prominent far-right nationalists are actually international grifters:

Confirmation that this account is Indian. pic.twitter.com/myNTIrfTPR

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) November 23, 2025

And as we’ll get to, one of the exposed accounts was reportedly the US Department of Homeland Security.

Chaos with Twitter location data

The accounts exposed via the Twitter location data update so far include the following:

We have a new heat map showing where most MAGA accounts on X operate pic.twitter.com/McarTTVh7o

— Right Wing Cope (@RightWingCope) November 23, 2025

Location: India https://t.co/YfrQ1MbpUe

— Philip Proudfoot (@PhilipProudfoot) November 23, 2025

Revealing the real location is the best thing that has ever happened on this app! pic.twitter.com/ZGzObksaJO

— PaulC (@PaulConRO) November 23, 2025

Here’s a fun story, remember all of those “I’m an independent Trump supporting woman” accounts on X that pretended to be real people in the US supporting trump?

Due to recent location updates, we now know almost all of them are based in Thailand.

Let’s take a look pic.twitter.com/7kRdlcPqHS

— Benjamin Strick (@BenDoBrown) November 22, 2025

The Right Wing Cope account published a ‘heat map’:

We have a new heat map showing where most MAGA accounts on X operate pic.twitter.com/McarTTVh7o

— Right Wing Cope (@RightWingCope) November 23, 2025

Many have reported that Twitter ‘paused’ or ‘ended’ the programme:

Twitter exposes location of accounts Thousands of MAGA propaganda accounts are non-US Twitter pauses feature pic.twitter.com/KbwwI5hq1G

— nyara (@nyaraVT) November 22, 2025

It was difficult to prove this, as Twitter is incredibly buggy, so sometimes different people have different user experiences. At the same time, the feature is back online for most.

‘Home’ land

There’s no way Musk didn’t know the Twitter location data update would expose right-wing grifter accounts. Saying that, he probably didn’t expect it to expose the US government:

So…X activated locations last night which showed US gov accounts like DHS opened and operating from Israel. Then 20 mins later, X deactivated the feature and today, Gov accts are “exempt” from the location feature. https://t.co/8kiU541EDg pic.twitter.com/3DvM2NkrEM

— GenXGirl (@GenXGirl1994) November 23, 2025

BREAKING:

Screen recording shows the department of homeland security is based out of Israel…

Is this why the location feature was abruptly removed? pic.twitter.com/Uki6W3eb1M

— ADAM (@AdameMedia) November 22, 2025

While many didn’t find the situation funny, the (alleged) Israelis running the Homeland Security account are not among them:

https://t.co/Xe6MVghyfV pic.twitter.com/4PJNovdEQT

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) November 22, 2025

This isn’t funny. You’re the Department of Homeland security and you’re not even based in my homeland.

Treason. pic.twitter.com/6E2NcugOUG

— Belthan (@Belthan_) November 22, 2025

The account data now says they’re based in the United States, but it has a circled ‘i’ next to it (what some people are describing as an ‘exclamation point’):

As people have highlighted, the symbol signifies that the account is using a VPN to hide their actual location:

Remember to always look for the exclamation mark on the opposite side of where it says “account based in” when they post screenshots of the new location feature. It means they’re using a VPN and keep an eye on the people who crop it out.

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) November 22, 2025

Wild times

Fair play to Elon Musk, this change to his social media site is actually a positive one. Does it make up for his years of negative choices? Not even slightly, but it has at least exposed some of the worst people on the website.

Featured image via Daniel Oberhaus (Flickr) / Public Domain

By Willem Moore

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