X's location tags remind users of the internet's oldest rule: Trust nothing

Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) has inadvertently taught a large number of web users an important lesson. Not everyone online is necessarily who you think they are, and you shouldn't believe everything you read. In October, head of product Nikita Bier told users that work was underway to show additional information on …

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone trust X before ?

serious question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Did anyone trust X before ?

X? Or its users?

[Helcat]

Re: Did anyone trust X before ?

Did anyone actually trust ANY social media before?

Okay, so some people will, but hopefully more people are waking up to the understanding that social media, and main stream media, too, is not exactly reliable.

[Cruachan]

Re: Did anyone trust X before ?

Of course, I asked Grok if I should trust X and it said 100%, Elon is a righteous dude.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

YOU DON'T SAY

"However, the real lesson from the incident is that people on the internet might not be who they say they are, and that the information shown might not be entirely accurate."

[vZeroG]

Re: YOU DON'T SAY

A good lesson indeed - especially for those that grew up perpetually online post mainstream internet.

I think they have a harder time remembering this than those of us who first got online at 300 baud back in the day.

This is a GOOD thing, and more social media sites should adopt this transparency.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: YOU DON'T SAY

"the information shown might not be entirely accurate."

I would read that as:

"the information shown might not be entirely inaccurate."

In the case of X I imagine that risk would be vanishingly small,

[Nifty]

Turns out that only people in low wage countries have a motive to earn clicks and $ on X. Maybe it would have been more informative for X to show people's hourly rate.

[Jedit]

"only people in low wage countries have a motive to earn clicks and $ on X"

More like "only people in Russia have a motive to support the orange clown".

[MachDiamond]

Blue Check

There's a "Homeland Security" account that turned out to be based in Israel.

I don't even see why the US Department of Homemade Homeland Security needs to have a Twitter account. It would be more appropriate if they had a news blog on the official website which should be more secure and should also be the Word right from the source.

I don't have an InstaPintaTwitFace account, I have a web site! My web site has my own domain and I don't use Google for email.

[Dinanziame]

Re: Blue Check

Let's be serious, if they had a blog on the official DHS website, nobody would ever read anything they write.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Blue Check

"Let's be serious, if they had a blog on the official DHS website, nobody would ever read anything they write."

Anything on Xitter is immediately a conspiricy/fakenews and while news agencies can have the same information as an intelligence agency, the source matters and the providence of the information. I believe I learned that from a Tom Clancy novel (Clear and Present Danger?).

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

On the internet, it's best to assume everyone's a dog.

Now will somebody please get their coat and take me for a walk... -------->>>>>

[MachDiamond]

"Now will somebody please get their coat and take me for a walk."

Now will somebody please get their coat and take me for a walk walkies.

[Boris the Cockroach]

The internet

where men are men, women are men and children FBI agents......

[IGotOut]

Re: The internet

.....There are no girls on the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The internet

There used to be, but there aren't any more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The internet

I've seen the reverse- a fair number of the depressed men I used to know on the internet are happy girls now.

[FrogsAndChips]

Re: The internet

I don't know where you live, but there are plenty of hot girls in my local area.

[SonofRojBlake]

Re: The internet

I don't know where you live, but there are plenty of hot girls in YOUR local area!

[Zoopy]

Re: The internet

Sorry to burst your bubble, but they're all interested in meeting ME, so ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The internet

Obligatory XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/713/

[MachDiamond]

Re: The internet

".....There are no girls on the internet"

There's a few. I have video.

They just aren't that many from the better sectors of the hot/crazy chart.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf71KrRmY14>

[Winkypop]

X marks the spot

Maybe

[tiggity]

Years ago, worked for a company where we had to have a social media presence.

As I worked in dev, my stuff was to be about "exciting new features" we would be adding.

As we had to use a few platforms I threw something together that would allow me to post essentially the same thing* to multiple social media networks (& had to create accounts** as they were not things I used.

One thing I do recall about Twitter API*** was that you could provide location info you were tweeting from as Lat / Long so I had a tweeting location that was an Easter (Island) Egg

* Twitter (as it was then) was biggest pain as 140 chars back then so my code had to do threaded tweets as a workaround, whereas on LinkedIn, FB it could be one thing.

** And have not been used since, no idea if they still exist as zero interest & cannot remember the creds (I don't reuse passwords & as I had no intention of using those things for anything but that role had no incentive to remember them)

*** Of the social media networks I linked my code with, Twitter was by far & away the most flexible API, though I read Musk has made it non free now & thus essentially destroyed mainstream use of the API