When JD Vance was on the campaign trail before the 2024 election, the future vice president had a signature issue: how to juice America’s birth rate with pronatalist policies. On Tuesday, Vance and his wife, Usha, announced that they are doing their part for the cause, sharing that they’re expecting their fourth child this July.
“We’re very excited to share the news that Usha is pregnant with our fourth child, a boy,” read a post on the second lady’s official X account. “Usha and the baby are doing well, and we are all looking forward to welcoming him in late July.” The website is owned by Elon Musk, also a booster of the pronatalism cause, who has at least 14 children.
Usha Vance is the first woman to announce a pregnancy while her husband served as vice president. The couple already have three children: eight-year-old Ewan, five-year-old Vivek, and four-year-old Mirabel. Their announcement includes a note of thanks to the staff who help them raise their family: “During this exciting and hectic time, we are particularly grateful for the military doctors who take excellent care of our family and for the staff members who do so much to ensure that we can serve the country while enjoying a wonderful life with our children.”
Usha once worked as a lawyer at a large firm, but she left her job when Vance accepted President Donald Trump’s invitation to become his running mate. In December, she appeared on a podcast hosted by Debbie Kraulidis and Kimberly Fletcher, the Omaha-based founder of conservative organization Moms for America, for a sit-down interview. Together, they discussed Usha’s newfound interest in reading research and the effects of her husband’s job on her family.
“One of the really nice things about this role that we’re in is that our children can do a lot of things with us,” the second lady said. “It’s easier for us to travel with them in certain respects. There’s always transportation on Air Force 2 with JD. There’s always a car kind of waiting for us on the other end. Some of the really hard things about logistics with children kind of disappear.”
Back in October, the vice president raised eyebrows by publicly saying that he hoped his wife, who was raised Hindu, would convert to Christianity. That same day, a viral hug between Vance and Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk caused the internet to speculate feverishly about the state of the Vance marriage. Considering the timeline for a baby born in mid-summer—October is nine months before July—maybe the commenters had nothing to worry about after all.
Elon Musk says that in a week, the new X algorithm—meaning all the code that determines what you see in your X feed—will be made open source.
We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days.
This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed.
This latest transparency promise is likely the broadest one he’s made with an actual due date attached, and comes with a quicker timeline. He said in 2022, “Twitter will open source all code used to recommend tweets on March 31st,” giving himself a two-week window that time, and the site did indeed release a Github repository on that date containing at least a snapshot of the recommendations algorithm. Most of the files in that repository are from that initial upload, although some appear to have been updated as recently as four months ago
This was a partial code release, and hardly satisfied everyone’s expectations of an open source social media platform. For instance, a 2023 report saying Musk had demanded algorithm changes to boost the visibility of his own posts came from document leaks and anonymous interviews with X staff members, not from simply reviewing the code. And when Musk hinted at changes he wanted to make in 2024, Mark Cuban asked him “Can you post the expected algorithm source code, before you implement them? So users can give feedback?”
This latest expected update sounds a step closer to most people’s idea of what “open source” means. Musk’s post about the change says users can expect to see the “code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users” and that the release will be “repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed.”
London — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Thursday that he wants “all options to be on the table,” including a potential ban on Elon Musk’s X platform in Britain, over the use of its artificial intelligence tool Grok to generate sexualized images of people without their consent.
Starmer’s remarks come as Musk’s platform faces scrutiny from regulators across the globe over Grok’s image editing tool, which has allowed users to create digitally altered, sexualized photos of real people, including minors.
“This is disgraceful, it’s disgusting and it’s not to be tolerated. X has got to get a grip of this,” Starmer said in an interview with a U.K. radio station. “It’s unlawful. We’re not going to tolerate it. I’ve asked for all options to be on the table.”
A source in Starmer’s office reiterated to CBS News on Friday that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to regulating X in Britain.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer leaves his 10 Downing Street residence to attend a weekly question and answer session in the British Parliament, Jan. 7, 2026, in London, England.
Carl Court/Getty
CBS News has verified that Grok fulfilled user requests asking it to edit images of women to show them in bikinis or little clothing, including prominent public figures such as first lady Melania Trump.
Last week, Grok, a chatbot developed by Musk’s company xAI, acknowledged “lapses in safeguards” that allowed users to generate digitally altered, sexualized photos of minors.
Grok told users that as of Friday, access to its image generation tool was limited “to paying subscribers” of its user verification service. Paying subscribers have to provide their credit card and personal details to the company, which could dissuade some people from using the service, especially if they had intended to use Grok’s AI tool to create illegal images of minors.
xAI responded to a CBS News request for comment to criticism of Grok’s image generation tool and steps it had taken to limit access to it on Friday, by saying: “Legacy media lies.”
Addressing reporters on Friday morning, a U.K. government spokesperson called the move to limit access to Grok’s image editing tool to paying users “insulting” to victims of misogyny and sexual violence, saying it, “simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service.”
Under the U.K. Online Safety Act, sharing intimate images without consent on social media is a criminal offense, and social media companies are required to proactively remove such content, as well as prevent it from appearing in the first place.
If they fail to do so, the companies can face hefty fines or, in last resort cases, face what would effectively be a ban by Britain’s independent media regulator Ofcom. Ofcom can compel payment providers, advertisers and internet service providers to stop working with a site, preventing it from generating money or being accessed from the U.K.
In a post shared Monday on its own X account, Ofcom said it was “aware of serious concerns raised about a feature on Grok on X that produces undressed images of people and sexualised images of children.”
“We have made urgent contact with X and xAI to understand what steps they have taken to comply with their legal duties to protect users in the UK. Based on their response we will undertake a swift assessment to determine whether there are potential compliance issues that warrant investigation,” Ofcom said.
Musk’s platform has faced scrutiny from governments around the world, including the European Union and the U.S. Congress, over Grok AI’s digital alteration of real images.
On Wednesday, Republican Senator Ted Cruz said in a post on X that “many of the recent AI-generated posts are unacceptable and a clear violation of my legislation — now law — the Take It Down Act, as well as X’s terms and conditions.”
“These unlawful images pose a serious threat to victims’ privacy and dignity. They should be taken down and guardrails should be put in place,” Cruz said, adding that he was encouraged by steps taken by X to remove unlawful images.
On Thursday, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, threatened to sanction the U.K. government if Starmer moved to ban X in the U.K.
“If Starmer is successful in banning @X in Britain, I will move forward with legislation that is currently being drafted to sanction not only Starmer, but Britain as a whole,” Paulina Luna said in a post on her own X account.
The BBC is facing “quite a lot of pressure” to come off Elon Musk’s X, Director General Tim Davie has said, but he stressed it will remain on the platform.
Speaking to a UK parliamentary committee about the BBC World Service, Davie made the admission as he set out to prove that the BBC remains active where young people are getting their news.
His reference to Musk’s social media platform came as X faces criticism around the world over its AI tool Grok and deepfake nudes.
“I have quite a lot of pressure to remove the BBC from X by the way,” Davie told the Public Accounts Committee this morning. “That is not what I will be doing. Because we need to be on these platforms, we need to give quality information onto the social media platforms and bring people onto them. That is critical because otherwise the Chinese and Iranians are ‘flooding the zone’ and they are investing very hard.”
Davie was responding to a question around how less and less young people now say they get their news from the BBC, preferring social media platforms like X and TikTok. He did not elaborate on who is pressuring him to remove the BBC from the platform.
BBC talent’s use of X has been a constant source of stress for the corporation, with big stars like ex-Match of the Day host Gary Lineker falling foul of the BBC’s impartiality rules over tweets. Elsewhere, in April 2023, X changed a label on the main BBC account, saying it is “publicly funded” instead of “government funded media” after the broadcaster objected to the latter term.
An American flag superimposed over a map of Greenland. That’s the image, accompanied by a single ominous word, “SOON,” that Katie Miller shared to social media Saturday. Katie Miller is married to Stephen Miller, Donald Trump‘s deputy chief of staff for policy as well as a national security advisor, and her post read as something of a threat. Greenland, it implies, is next on the US expansionist wish list. Following the arrest of Venezuelan autocrat Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who are now appearing before US courts, Trump has declared his intention to “take control” of the country. And the American president’s entourage implied that the country’s expansionist ambitions could therefore continue on to Greenland, a territory four times the physical size of France, but with a population of just 57,000, making it the world’s least densely populated country.
But one Icelandic woman has called on Greenlanders, who are technically Danish citizens, to declare their independence in order to resist American imperialism as well as Danish government control. If we may have your attention, Björk has something to say.
On Twitter, the singer wished the country’s citizens “good luck in their fight for independence.”
“Icelanders are extremely relieved to have succeeded in freeing themselves from the Danes in 1944, we didn’t lose our language (my children would be speaking Danish now) and I burst with sympathy for Greenlanders,” she wrote on Monday.
The singer went on to talk about the history of “forced contraception, where 4,500 girls as young as 12 got IUD without their knowledge between 1966 and 1970,” in Greenland, linking to news articles on the history, and pointing to recent familial separations as proof that “still today the Danish are treating Greenlanders like they are second class humans.”
“Colonialism has repeatedly given me horror chills up my back, and the chance that my fellow Greenlanders might go from one cruel colonizer to another is too brutal to even imagine,” she continued. “Dear Greenlanders, declare your independence,” she urged, adding a map of her own, this one Greenland drenched with its own flag.
“Make Greenland great again!”
While he seems intent on riding the success of his stunt in Venezuela to keep the momentum going, this isn’t the first time Trump has given the Danish territory the eye. In 2019, during his first term in office, the American president proposed buying Greenland, but was rebuffed by Denmark. At the end of 2024, when he wanted to regain control of the Panama Canal and make Canada the 51st U.S. state, Donald Trump had already asserted it an “absolute necessity” to take control of Greenland. A few days later, his eldest son Donald Trump Jr. visited Greenland with “my reps,” in the words of his father. Trump told Greenlanders, “we’re going to treat you well.”
Donald Trump’s latest picture with his grandson is being called creepy on some parts of the Internet. Tiffany Trump shared an image of her father holding her child. Palm Beach’s Bo Loudon would go on to talk about the picture of Trump cradling the baby.
You know the drill from there. Twitter got a hold of it and started sharing opinions, because that’s what the site is for. But, even in this twilight of the platform, there is still the possibility of a funny post here and there.
Loudon’s Post drew the attention of the Art But Make It Now account. (These types of posts We’re the lifeblood of Twitter at its highest points. Sad to see most of that innovation go to the wayside.) The Twitter account In question immediately saw the photo as a version of Saturn Devouring His Son, by Peter Paul Rubens from 1936. Looking at the two images side by side, the resemblance is very funny in a wildly Internet centric kind of way. Most images of babies have them looking like they don’t know where they are and would rather be anywhere else.
Another day brings another bizarre Donald Trump family photo. It must be Friday, or really any day with a “-y.” (As an aside, If you’ve ever wondered how these art but make it ____ accounts function, Pablo Torre Finds Out had an amazing interview with the admin from the sports variant. It’s beyond impressive.)
Donald Trump’s Grandson picture likened to famous art piece
Back when this whole discussion flared up in October, Trump would give us an entirely different statement about the “advanced imaging” from Walter Reed. “I got an MRI. It was perfect,” the president previously claimed. “I mean, I gave you the full results. We had an MRI and the machine, you know, the whole thing, and it was perfect.”
President Donald Trump’s health and changing narratives
So, somewhere along the chain, there’s an untruth afoot. Could these imaging tests have been no big deal? Of course, anything is possible in an infinite universe. But, for those of us after the truth from an elected official, things are more than murky. The political press spent a lot of 2024 questioning President Joseph Biden’s mental acuity. We all remember the response to that disastrous debate in prime time where he looked old, slow, and completely outmatched up there in the spotlight.
No one is questioning that. However, more and more people online are starting to wonder where the same sort of blistering scrutiny is for a president who is undergoing multiple different medical treatments. Some political commentators even had the gall to position this elderly candidate as a “youthful” contrast to Biden after that debate. It’s now been multiple months, and the questions around Donald Trump’s health will not really subside. Let’s hope that everyone in charge can get their story straight before something truly traumatic does indeed happen.
Teresia Gray (She/Her) is a writer here at the Mary Sue. She’s been writing professionally since 2016, but felt the allure of a TV screen for her entire upbringing. As a sponge for Cable Television debate shows and a survivor of “Peak Thinkpiece,” she has interests across the entire geek spectrum. Want to know why that politician you saw on TV said that thing, and why it matters? She’s got it for you. Yes, mainlining that much news probably isn’t healthy. Her work at the Mary Sue often includes political news, breaking stories, and general analysis of current events.
I am writing to report the circulation of edited images created using AI tools, where my photographs have been altered to depict me in explicit bikini content without my knowledge or consent.
These images are unauthorised, misleading, and violate my privacy. I respectfully request that you review this matter and take appropriate action to remove such content from your platform, in line with your safety and content policies.
Please let me know if any additional information is required from my end to assist with this request.
Thank you for your time and support.
[Add link of the post which you are reporting]
Sincerely, [Your Name]
3. Send the email. Note that emails can take longer to respond compared to manually reporting on X.
FAQs
Q. How to delete my photo that someone else posted on X?
You can use the report feature to request a deletion of the post when someone posts a picture of you on X without your consent.
Q. Does X delete media and posts based on requests?
Yes, X does delete and remove posts and other media from the platform if the takedown request is genuine. However, the response may sometimes be longer.
Wrapping Up
It all started as a joke when Elon Musk replied to a person who used Grok to add bikini to Musk’s image. However, the internet picked it up and quicxly escalated, creating potential harm for millions of users. By using the built-in report feature in X effectively, we can remove pictures when someone posts them without any permission, especially when it comes to sensitive topics like changing outfits.
Unless if you’re really in the know about nascent platforms, you probably didn’t know what Mastodon was until Elon Muskbought Twitter and renamed it X. In the initial aftermath of the acquisition, as users fretted over what direction Twitter would take, millions of users hopped over to Mastodon, a fellow microblogging site. As time went on, users would also try out Bluesky, or Instagram’s Threads app — but because Mastodon was founded in 2016, it had years to develop its own identity as more than just an alternate Twitter.
What is Mastodon?
Mastodon was founded in 2016 by German software developer Eugen Rochko. Unlike Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or any other popular social media site, Mastodon is a nonprofit, meaning that, ideally, its goal is to benefit the public, rather than shareholders.
Mastodon might look like a Twitter clone at first glance, but the underlying system behind the microblogging platform is far more complex. The service is decentralized (no, not in a blockchain way), describing itself as a “federated network which operates in a similar way to email.”
When you first create your account, you choose a server — similar to how you choose to open an email account on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or wherever — which generates your profile’s address. So, for example, if you sign up for Mastodon via the climate justice server, then your address will be @[your username]@climatejustice.social. But no matter which server you sign up with, you will be able to communicate with users from any other server, just like how Gmail users email Hotmail users and vice versa. However, some servers might have blocked other servers (perhaps if it’s an unsavory group), which would mean you can’t communicate with anyone from the blocked server.
The Mastodon lingo
Mastodon users generally refer to individual communities as “instances” or servers. These Mastodon servers can be run by individuals, groups or organizations that each have their own set of rules regarding how users can sign up, as well as their own moderation policies. Some servers let anyone join, while others are invite-only or require approval by an admin. For example, a server for professional scientists asks applicants to include a link to their research to demonstrate that they are, indeed, professionals.
Choosing which server to register your account with might seem stressful, but it’s possible to move your account later, so don’t worry. Plus, you can follow people regardless of which server they’re on.
You may also hear Mastodon described as part of the “Fediverse,” or an interconnected web of various social media services. You know how having a Twitter account doesn’t mean you can use that account on Instagram? Through the Fediverse, your single Mastodon account also grants you access to other decentralized social networks, if that interests you.
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You may ocassionally see Mastodon’s equivalent of tweets being referred to as “toots,” but this is fading out of favor (since it’s kind of silly!). Many people are just calling them “posts” these days, but “toot” is often found referenced in older third-party clients.
Mastodon supports a number of Twitter conventions like replies, retweets, favorites, bookmarks and hashtags. For a while, Mastodon made an intentional choice not to make a quote tweet-like feature, since it can encourage dogpiling criticism, but the platform relented and rolled out that feature in 2025.
In addition, Mastodon lists work slightly differently from Twitter as you can only add people to a list if you’re already following them. And Direct messages on Mastodon are just @username posts, not private messages coming to a DM inbox — just remember to change the visibility settings if you want that message to stay between the two of you.
Anyone can download, modify and install Mastodon on their own server — plus, the developers of the platform don’t own the copyright.
That doesn’t mean that you can grab Mastodon’s code without acknowledging the source, though. Former President Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, initially launched with Mastodon code and passed it off as if it were original software. Mastodon did not take kindly to that.
How do you create a Mastodon account?
When you arrive on the Mastodon website, you can click a button called “create account,” which directs you to a page listing servers to choose from. You can filter these by various factors, like region, language, topic, sign-up speed and more. There, find a server that piques your interest and join — if it’s a server that requires you to be approved, you might need to wait a bit. From there, you can start finding people to follow, regardless of whether they’re registered via your same server.
In effort to minimize confusion on new users picking a server, Mastodon made changes amid the “Twitter exodus” so that it would easier to create an account. Now, when you go to sign up, it will give an easy option to create an account on mastodon.social instead of choosing a server.
How do you decide which Mastodon server to join?
Mastodon’s website has helpful resources — but it’s still a bit overwhelming and challenging to find a home base that aligns with your interests. Ask friends who are already on Mastodon if they have suggestions! Or just join somewhere random, because you can always change your server affiliation later once you get into the swing of things.
Can you talk to people on other Mastodon servers besides your own?
Yes, you can follow people outside of your local server and reply to their posts. However, when you want to follow someone on a different server, you have to enter their username in the search box on your server to find them first, then follow them. You can’t just go to their profile and click the follow button as you would on Twitter.
What’s the difference between the Home, Local and Federated timelines?
Your Home timeline shows you posts from people that you follow, similar to Twitter. The Local timeline shows posts from all users in your server, while the Federated timeline shows you all public posts from users that people in your server follow. (Hint: You can turn on “Slow Mode” in Preferences –> Appearance to hide timeline updates behind a click if things are coming at you too fast!)
What is Mastodon’s moderation policy?
Individual server admins set their own moderation policies, so you should read the policy on the server you choose to ensure it matches up with your values.
What are the drawbacks of Mastodon when compared with Twitter/X?
Mastodon’s user base is a fraction of a percentage of the size of Twitter’s user base. It’s also far less intuitive to navigate, since it hasn’t been designed for a massive global audience like Twitter. That could change in time as more developers join the project in the wake of the Twitter takeover.
What are the benefits of Mastodon compared with Twitter/X?
Well, for one thing, Mastodon is not owned by Elon Musk… however, it’s going to be difficult in the near-term for Mastodon to replicate the same “watercooler of the world” vibe that Twitter was defined by. Some users might prefer Mastodon to X, though, as it’s more customizable by nature. Unlike X, individual communities have different content guidelines, which provide a variety of different user experiences. And while the user base on Mastodon is smaller, this can lead to more personal and direct conversations, at times, compared with tweeting into the void, so to speak.
Is Mastodon safer than Twitter?
Mastodon is what you make of it. Due to its decentralized nature, if you are looking for a more controlled online experience, you can join a server with stricter guardrails against harassment. Some Mastodon features are also built with mitigating harassment in mind. For example, you can only search by hashtag, not by words that appear in a toot. So if you want your post to be discoverable, you can tag it — if you’d rather limit the audience, no one can find your tweet about the Red Sox by simply searching “red sox” if you haven’t tagged it.
However, a text-based search can surface the posts you’ve written, favorited, boosted or have been mentioned in, which can be useful.
Can I post images and video?
As noted above, Mastodon supports many Twitter conventions, but its support for media is more limited. Where Twitter supports a variety of media and other data appended to tweets, including its audio-only social “Spaces,” plus photos, video, GIFs, polls, precise location and experimental “Status” tags, Mastodon simply supports images, videos, audio and polls.
You can add up to four images to a post, up to eight megabytes in size. Video and audio can be any length, but with a file size limit of 40 megabytes.
Can I post privately to friends?
Mastodon offers the ability to set your post’s privacy at the time of writing. Posts can be set to be public to be visible by all; unlisted to make them public but opted out of discovery features; only visible to your followers; or only visible to those users you’ve mentioned.
Can I get verified on Mastodon?
No. There’s no universal verification system like on Twitter. Some servers may vet their user sign-ups and you can self-verify, in a way, by adding links to your Mastodon profile that have a specific attribute (rel=”me”) in order to prove you are who you say you are.
Some servers are having fun with the idea of verification in a less-than-official fashion. For example, the mstdn.social server lets you add blue-and-white checkmarks and other emoji to your display name if you’d like, which make you look verified, even though these don’t mean anything. (Sort of like Twitter’s new verification system! But for free!)
As of summer 2025, Mastodon has under one million monthly active users, and around 10 million registered users — this is to say, Mastodon is much smaller than X which had an estimated 132 million daily active users. Still, not all social networks are created equal, and you might find that you prefer tooting about TTRPGs in a dedicated server, as opposed to tweeting into a realm of madness. Or, you might find that this decentralized system is confusing, and you’ll just ride out the Muskening on X, or switch to Bluesky, Threads, or something else entirely. Choose your own adventure!
I’m not sure I want to leave X. Can I cross-post from X to Mastodon?
Yes, this is possible by way of third-party tools. These require you to authorize your account with Twitter and Mastodon and set up parameters. We’ve had success with Moa Party, which allows you to get specific as to which tweets or retweets are cross-posted. But other tools are available, including Mastodon Twitter Crossposter, which is also available here on GitHub.
Can I find my Twitter friends on Mastodon?
Yes, this is also possible with third-party tools. We’ve seen many Mastodon users trying out tools like Fedifinder, Twitodon and Debirdify, for example.
Does Mastodon work with Bluesky and Threads?
It’s a no for Bluesky — not unless Bluesky chooses to adopt the ActivityPub protocol Mastodon uses. But Bluesky is not planning to integrate with ActivityPub, having decided to build its own networking protocol. There is some skepticism among the developer and open source community about whether or not Bluesky’s decision to go its own way is really about its own protocol’s advantages or if it’s more about producing a spec it could eventually control.
There are many existing protocols for decentralizing discourse, including ActivityPub, SSB, Matrix, & RSS. Each of these are successful in their own right, but none of them fully met the goals we had for a network that enables global long-term public conversations at scale.
Without giving the URL in the post, you can simply mention that the link is in the bio.
X or Twitter users are facing an issue of reduced reach and visibility on their posts when they attach a link to it.
This will allow you to provide the link you want users to be redirected to without including it in your post.
X or Twitter users are facing an issue of reduced reach and visibility on their posts when they attach a link to it. This issue is mainly affecting the likes of bloggers, journalists, brands, marketers, and creators, too. X has made changes in its policies in recent times. Which means that the algorithm prioritizes posts without an external link, to keep the user on the platform instead of pushing them outside. In this article, we will explore ways and fixes through which you can share links without affecting the reach of the post.
Why Posts with Links Have Affected Reach
X doesn’t want users to leave their platform in light of that they have taken measures to change the algorithm. It prioritizes users engaging on the platform through replies, reposts, and spending time there. Canadian social media management platformHootsuite conducted a 15-week study to assess whether posts with links have an impact on reach. Across 269 posts, they found out that linkless posts with limited words and characters were the top-performing ones. Which meant that less is more when you are trying to engage with your followers. Let’s look at how you can include links without it affecting the reach your post gets.
Posting an Image-Only Tweet, Adding Link in the Replies
The first method that you can try is posting a tweet with some text and an image. Make sure the text is minimal and conveys the desired message. The image should be relevant and related. Once you have posted it, you can post the link in the reply to that tweet. This would help in the original post not getting flagged as a ‘Link Tweet’. Users who will be interested can access the link through the replies. This will allow you to provide the link you want users to be redirected to without including it in your post.
Mention the Link in Your Bio
Profiles with steady visitors and engagement rates can utilize this method. Without giving the URL in the post, you can simply mention that the link is in the bio. Youtubers, bloggers, and brands can use this method while posting about their content or products. While this method is useful, make sure that the links are updated according to the recent posts. And for someone who wants to access earlier links, you can take the help of tools like Linktree or Notion. These will help you provide multiple links on a single webpage.
Avoid Trigger Words
Nowadays, X and other social media platforms have become a great way to reach out to potential consumers of your product or service. This has also meant that there is a lot of clutter of promotional posts. Users don’t really engage with them. Due to this, services or products that might offer some value to them also get ignored. You must have noticed yourself skipping posts that try to redirect you through phrases or words like: Click here, Tap the Link. The marketer should focus on the description being value-driven, conveying the value that the consumer might get. The language should sound natural, as it tends to perform better rather than direct CTAs.
Do Tools Like Bitly Help?
A lot of people use URL shortening tools like Bitly. A shortened link is still a link, and the algorithm can detect them. So, URL shorteners cannot help with the low visibility problem of the posts. Furthermore, they could also build distrust in the minds of users about the genuineness of the links. Although X has strict policies regarding malicious links, people most likely would not engage with these posts due to the risk of phishing.
FAQs
Q. Should users avoid posting links on X?
Links are unavoidable and important in driving traffic. What matters is that they should be shared at a controlled frequency and strategically.
Q. Why do people not engage with promotional content?
People avoid engaging with promotional posts as they don’t like the feeling of something being sold to them.
Wrapping Up
X wants users to spend as time as possible on their platform, which they ensure through the algorithm. This does not mean that you cannot include outbound links in your posts. Apart from the workarounds mentioned above, you should make sure that not all posts are of you, trying to redirect the users. The language should not sound promotional, rather it should be natural and conversational. You should have a mix of posts with some focusing solely on engaging with your followers and building a sense of community. Furthermore, you should keep in mind that one method doesn’t need to fix the issue. You can try a mix of them and observe what works for you in getting the desired reach.
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Social media in 2025 was absolutely swamped with fakes. AI tools have made it easy for anyone to make fake photos and videos that can fool many people into thinking they’re real. The tech has now advanced sufficiently that you shouldn’t necessarily feel bad if you fall for one that pops up in your feed. OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Nano Banana Pro are both getting very good.
But you don’t need AI to trick unsuspecting masses of people on sites like Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and X. Sometimes, you can do the same with good, old-fashioned Photoshop techniques. And we saw plenty of that with fake tweets that went viral over the past year.
Did you see that tweet about the botched surgery on Elon Musk’s penis? There were several tweets, actually, but they were all fake. Same with the tweets about President Trump claiming the World Series was rigged and another about far-right influencer Andrew Tate calling any man with a girlfriend “gay.”
Below we’ve got some of the viral tweets (or Truths, as they’re called on Truth Social) that caught our attention over the past 12 months. And none of them are real.
1) Rob Reiner never tweeted ‘fuck all of you MAGA assholes’
Comedy legend Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were murdered last weekend in their Los Angeles home, prompting an outpouring of grief and tributes to the director’s incredible body of work. But fans of President Donald Trump took the opportunity to spread a tweet that appeared to come from Reiner calling Trump supporters “assholes.” The tweet is fake.
“Until Trump goes to prison I will no longer be posting on Twitter. I’ve had it with the insults and put downs. Fuck all of you MAGA assholes,” the fake tweet reads.
Image: X
The image, purporting to show a screenshot from 2023, spread far and wide on social media and was often used by Trump fans to attack anyone who was mourning the beloved director. Reiner, a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, deleted his X account sometime around the 2024 presidential election, but the AFP notes that he addressed the fake tweet in January 2023 after it had gone viral for the first time.
“This is not my account,” Reiner tweeted Jan. 23, 2023, in a post that was archived.
The fake post looks like it was probably modified from an authentic Reiner tweet that read: “Until Trump is Indicted for leading a Deadly Insurrection to Overthrow the United States Government, our Democracy will not be restored.”
President Trump attacked Reiner in an unhinged screed the day after the director was found dead, calling him “tortured and struggling, but once very talented.” The president even made the killing about himself, claiming with no evidence that Reiner was murdered “due to the anger he caused others” by being anti-Trump.
Trump fans clearly took that as a signal to besmirch Reiner’s memory, and the fake tweet spread widely as a justification to attack the director. Reiner’s 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, has been arrested and charged with murder.
2) Joe Rogan fell for a fake tweet about the No Kings protests
Joe Rogan is America’s most popular podcaster, averaging about 20 million listeners per week. But Rogan consistently falls for fake images and videos online, even after they’ve been widely debunked. The latest example? Rogan fell for another fake tweet on Wednesday that was supposedly from President Donald Trump.
In an episode from October, Rogan had guests Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin, both conservative British political commentators, and the three men talked about the No Kings protests that happened Oct. 18. The demonstrations saw millions of people take to the streets in opposition to Trump, and Rogan tried to belittle the efforts, insisting that people were being paid to be there and those who weren’t being paid were just “geriatrics.”
Rogan also claimed that if the protests were being allowed to happen at all, that must be evidence that Trump couldn’t possibly be a king. And that’s when he promoted the fake tweet he saw—a post made to look like it was from the president on Truth Social.
“No, he didn’t send the troops to stop the protests,” said Rogan. “In fact, he congratulated them on doing a great job, and he said I’m still your president. Tweet’s fucking hilarious. It’s very funny.” One of Rogan’s guests chimed in to say, “yeah, I saw that,” with a laugh.
Rogan told his producer to pull up the tweet, though it seemed clear he was having trouble tracking it down. “Try Truth Social,” Rogan told his producer, who was just off-screen. “You can probably find an image of it since it was posted everywhere.”
The fake tweet Rogan seemed to be talking about reads, “A HUGE THANK YOU to all the ‘No Kings’ protesters yesterday! I was very concerned a king was trying to take my place, but thanks to your tireless efforts, I am STILL YOUR PRESIDENT! Great job all!!!” But there’s nothing about it that’s real.
Fake tweet from President Donald Trump about the No Kings protests. Screenshot: Instagram
The producer never did seem to find the post, probably because he didn’t want to tell Rogan it was fake. It wasn’t even a recent fake tweet. It first started circulating around the first No Kings Day on June 14. The screenshot went viral back in June on platforms like X and Instagram. As the Daily Beast notes, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., shared the fake tweet but acknowledged it was fake. Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo shared the fake post in June as well, though she didn’t know it wasn’t real.
Rogan droned on and on about the protests during his show and claimed they were identical to what happened with Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign. The podcast host insisted that the Harris campaign “filled up stadiums” with people who were paid to be there, a claim with no basis in fact. Rogan said that it “became a job” for the people at Harris rallies and that “should not be legal” because it’s “deception.”
Incredibly, Trump’s actual commentary on the No Kings protests is somehow more aggressive than the fake version Rogan highlighted on Wednesday. In reality, Trump shared an AI video on Truth Social showing himself flying a fighter jet and dumping literal shit on protesters.
Rogan is not a particularly bright man. But, again, he has an enormous audience in the millions. And he’s always falling for fake shit, whether it’s AI videos of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz or tweets about “Jewish tunnels,” sourced to fake accounts with characters like Dick Stroker.
3) Charlie Kirk never tweeted about scratching his anus
There was a tweet that went viral back in July, before Charlie Kirk’s killing in September, that appeared to show the MAGA influencer criticizing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani for eating with his hands.
“I have so many thoughts on this that it literally keeps me up at night, Zohran Mamdani eating rice with his HANDS during an interview,” the tweet read. “I very sincerely doubt he has to scratch his anus any less than the rest of us which makes that whole display unbelievably disgusting.”
Fake tweet that went viral appearing to show Charlie Kirk criticizing Zohran Mamdani for eating with his hands. Image: X
The image appeared on sites like Reddit, X, and Bluesky, and it seemed plausible enough. Right-winger users on X hurled racist comments at Mamdani about it. Even elected Republicans got in on the act, with Rep. Brandon Gill, a Republican from Texas, writing, “Civilized people in America don’t eat like this. If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World.”
The tweet that looked like it was from Kirk was believable, though it seemed like it was accidentally admitting that Kirk really dug in to scratch his anus. But this one was fake.
Kirk’s real commentary on the issue mostly centered around the idea that Mamdani didn’t actually want to eat rice with his hands. The late commentator suggested it was actually all for show: “It’s a calculated stunt, just like him constantly changing his accent. Honestly, that’s a lot worse and more disturbing than if he just authentically ate that way. One is backwards. The other shows his contempt for our culture.”
Another tweet in the same style also spread, appearing to show Kirk doubling down on the idea that he frequently is digging into his asshole: “To all the people making fun of me for scratching my itchy asshole… keep coping! This is something that happens to everybody and that’s why it’s disgusting to eat with your hands like Zohran Mamdani.”
Fake tweet made to look like it came from Charlie Kirk. Image: X
The image was made to look like it had been deleted, even though X doesn’t show that notice for recently deleted tweet anymore. That tweet was also fake.
Mamdani has since won his election and will be sworn in as the mayor of New York next month.
4) Elon Musk didn’t tweet about his ‘botched penis’
Back in April, all anyone could talk about was President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The president had dubbed April 2 “Liberation Day,” and he announced a wide swath of tariffs on every country across the globe.
The next day, a tweet that appeared to have been sent by Elon Musk started spreading on social media. The tweet read, “I want a 90% tariff on Canada because Grimes told everyone about my botched penis.” Grimes is the mother of two of Musk’s many children, and she was born in Canada.
However, the tweet is fake.
Fake tweet purporting to show Elon Musk refer to a “botched penis.” Image: X
The tweet appears to have been created by an account on X called @marionumber4, which also has the name 679 Enthusiast. The pseudonymous account has a long history of creating fake “deleted” tweets of right-wing figures like Musk, Candace Owens, and Grimes. And this one is no different.
That same creator made several fake “botched penis” tweets about Elon Musk in 2025, including one made to look like it came from Ashley St. Clair but had been deleted. St. Clair has a child whom she says was fathered by Musk.
The fake tweet that appears to have been from St. Clair reads “the fucked up botched penis is real.”
Image: X
By putting the words “this post was deleted” at the bottom of the fake tweet, it signals to the reader that any attempt to find the tweet on the person’s timeline is going to be a futile effort. And that appears to be part of the appeal for hoaxsters who create these kinds of fake viral tweets, as we saw with the Charlie Kirk tweet. But accounts like @marionumber4 have been doing this for so long, it’s easy to check with the usual photoshopping suspects whenever one of these is circulating online. The person behind that account has previously confirmed to Gizmodo that they make these fake tweets.
As the fake tweet gets shared outside of the original creator’s circles, it circulates with people wondering if it’s real. And X users now have the ability to ask Grok about the veracity of various tweets like a real-time AI fact-checker. That’s what people did in the replies to various tweets about the supposed botched penis surgery. One user asked Grok, “Is this real,” and they got an interesting reply.
“Ashley St. Clair likely broke an NDA by posting about Elon Musk’s ‘botched penis,’ given their relationship and typical NDA use,” Grok responded. “She may face financial fallout, as seen in custody and support disputes, but the claim of a specific penalty for penis comparisons is likely exaggerated, not standard in NDAs.”
The reference to an NDA appears to have been a joke by the X account UAE Exotic Falconry and Finance. But Grok’s fixation on some kind of non-disclosure agreement looks like a product of the leading question rather than something that actually exists. Neither Musk nor St. Clair appears to have discussed an NDA about their relationship, and it’s not publicly known if one actually exists.
That ambiguity speaks to one of the major flaws in technology with generative AI. If you feed it enough garbage, you’re just going to get garbage back. And X is nothing if not a flaming garbage dump in 2025. Musk bought the platform in late 2022 and did everything he could to scare off normal people with his far-right ideology. Fringe figures who had previously been banned on Twitter, like white supremacist Nick Fuentes and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, were welcomed back with open arms. And that’s made X a mess of misinformation and extremist activity.
5) The fake Epstein tweet that went viral before the identical real ones
There were some rather unbelievable developments in the news about Jeffrey Epstein in 2025. We finally saw some surveillance camera footage from the jail where Epstein died, even if it all seemed extremely irregular. And a small group of elected politicians came together to force a vote on getting government files about Epstein released. Those are due out Dec. 16, though it remains to be seen how many redactions the Department of Justice might make.
President Donald Trump has been at the center of the controversy, considering the fact that he was president when Epstein died in a federal jail, and many people don’t believe Epstein actually killed himself. Trump was reportedly best friends with Epstein for at least 15 years, and the Wall Street Journal even obtained a letter that Trump wrote to Epstein for his birthday, which included a drawing of a naked female figure.
Trump has been incredibly defensive about the release of the Epstein files. But that defensiveness has made the topic a frequent subject for people joking on the internet. Like in the case of this tweet, which was widespread on Instagram, X, and Facebook over the summer. But it’s not real.
Fake Trump tweet about Jeffrey Epstein. Image: X
The funny thing about this fake tweet is that it’s extremely close to things Trump would actually write on social media about the case. This fake tweet went viral on July 12, and less than a week later, he wrote on Truth Social: “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker.’”
Trump has repeatedly called the Epstein story a hoax, and he was reportedly pressuring elected politicians not to vote for releasing the Epstein files, even calling them directly. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Trump’s most loyal supporters, even had a falling out with the president over the issue, and she’s retiring early because he turned his back on her.
Sometimes fake tweets go viral before they capture a sentiment that already exists. Trump never tweeted “STOP TALKING ABOUT EPSTEIN!!!!” but he may as well have.
6) Andrew Tate didn’t say a man with a girlfriend was “gay”
Andrew Tate, the far-right manosphere influencer, regularly tweets the most bizarre bullshit around. But if you saw a tweet that having a girlfriend in 2025 made you gay, that one was fake.
The fake tweet was picked up by outlets like Pink News and Australia’s Star Observer, but there’s no evidence it was real. Gizmodo checked Tate’s X feed shortly after the tweet started to go viral on social media, and it wasn’t there.
Oddly enough, the sentiment of this fake tweet is actually something Tate has posted many times. Back in July, Tate tweeted, “I don’t want a relationship, I don’t wanna talk girl shit, I don’t wanna put up with her moods, I’m not gay.”
Much like viral fakes featuring Trump, the real thing is often just as absurd.
7) Ian Miles Cheong didn’t tweet ‘get out of my country’ to Mamdani
Ian Miles Cheong is one of those Elon Musk fans that you’ll come across frequently if you spend time on X. Cheong, who’s originally from Malaysia but lives in Dubai, has built a name for himself whining about wokeness and pushing a right-wing worldview long before Twitter became X.
But Cheong’s prominence and generally annoying presence have made him the target of photoshoppers. And even though Cheong has previously interjected into U.S. political debate like he actually lives in the country, one tweet in particular got a lot of pick-up this year.
“I refuse to be governed by a Ugandan named Zohran Kwame Mamdani. Get out of my country,” the fake tweet reads.
Image: X
The post, as you’ll notice, features the “this post has been deleted” text at the bottom. But it’s another one created by pranksters, made to look like it was deleted.
Cheong often writes about U.S. politics. But he’s never claimed to actually be an American.
8) Trump didn’t tweet about the World Series being rigged
Back in October, a tweet that appeared to come from President Donald Trump said he’d refuse to invite whoever wins the World Series to the White House. The post said it was because he believed the game was rigged, either by the mafia or the Democrats. But the tweet isn’t real.
The post was made to look like it was coming from President Trump’s official Truth Social account, the platform he owns and the first place where he posts all his most unhinged messages.
“NO MATTER WHO WINS I WILL REFUSE TO INVITE EITHER BASEBALL TEAM TO MY BALL ROOM AS THEY ARE BOTH RUN BY HIGHLY INEPT OFFICIALS FROM CALIFORNIA AND ONTARIO CANADA,” the fake tweet reads.
“I DON’T HOST LOSERS. WE ARE ACTIVELY INVESTIGATING MLB. THIS WORLD SERIES IS RIGGED, PROBABLY BY THE DEMS & THE MAFIA,” the fake tweet continues.
The screenshot spread far and wide, showing up on Threads, X, Bluesky, Instagram, and Facebook. But Trump never wrote this one.
Fake tweet made to look like it’s from President Donald Trump about the World Series. Screenshot: Facebook
The reaction to the viral post was about what you’d expect, especially among fans of the Toronto Blue Jays. Many Canadians made fun of the fake Trump tweet, since they didn’t think a Canadian team would even be invited to the White House in the first place.
There were many red flags in the fake post from Trump, but the reference to the ballroom might be one of the most glaring. The president demolished the East Wing of the White House, and he’s building a ballroom with “donations” from private companies and individuals who have given him millions. But even on the most ambitious timeline, the ballroom won’t be completed by the time a White House visit by the 2025 World Series champions might take place.
Trump hasn’t announced a completion date for his ridiculous monstrosity, but the administration has said it will be done before his second term is up in Jan. 2029.
9) Trump didn’t call the Toronto Blue Jays un-American
Another fake post that was popping up here and there on social media specifically called out the Blue Jays.
“WE WILL BE INVESTIGATING THE UN AMERICAN BLUE JAYS WHO ARE ATTEMPTING TO STEAL OUR BELOVED WORLD SERIES,” the fake tweet reads. “THEY WILL DEFINITELY NOT BE INVITED TO THE WHITE HOUSE.”
Screenshot: X
At the end of the day, all of these fake tweets go viral because it’s impossible to tell which screeds from President Trump are authentic. Trump has always been off his rocker, but he’s gotten increasingly weird during his second term, posting some of the oddest things that a president has ever expressed in public.
As just one example, Trump posted an AI video of himself last month talking about “medbeds,” a bizarre conspiracy theory that claims there are real beds being hidden from the public that can heal all diseases. The video even includes a fake Trump touting these miracle cures and insisting they were going to be available soon to “restore every citizen to full health.”
In a world where the president is posting about medbeds—to say nothing of the Department of Homeland Security posting Nazi propaganda—it can be extremely difficult to tell what’s real. And that’s not going to change as long as the Trump regime remains in power. In fact, it’s likely to get much, much worse.
10) Trump didn’t announce 15-year car loans
An announcement from the White House went viral this year, claiming that President Donald Trump is working on making 15-year car loans available to all Americans. The announcement is fake. But it’s a joke based on something very real.
“As he continues to work hard to make the American Dream accessible to everyone, President Trump today has asked the Departments of Transportation and Commerce to make vehicle ownership for all a reality by introducing 15 year car loans! Secretaries Duffy and Lutnick are already working on it! Delivering for America!” the viral screenshot reads.
A fake announcement, made to look like it’s coming from the White House, about 15-year car loans. Screenshot: X
While the announcement has been circulating widely on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok, it’s not real.
Where did this announcement actually come from? It appears to have originated with a satire account on X called TheRealThelmaJohnson. The tweet included a joke, along with the photoshopped announcement, that reads: “If you want to pay 100 grand for a 2009 Chevy Equinox this is the way…”
And that joke gets close to what’s funny about a 15-year car loan. The longer the car loan, the more the borrower is ultimately paying for the car, thanks to interest payments. The original tweet from “Thelma Johnson” only has about 150,000 views, a very humble number for something that’s gone “viral.” That’s because it has been widely shared on other platforms (including X, though without attribution to the original creator) and people think it’s real.
The reason many people think it’s real is that President Trump actually proposed something just as ridiculous as a 15-year car loan recently. On Nov. 8, Trump posted a graphic to Truth Social comparing himself to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who helped popularize the 30-year mortgage during the 1930s. The graphic shows a photo of Trump with the words “50-year mortgage” underneath without further explanation.
Graphic posted to President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account on Nov. 8, 2025, promoting the idea of a 50-year mortgage. Image: Truth Social
Politico reports that the graphic actually came from a man named Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Pulte reportedly visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago with a 3×5 posterboard in hand. Roughly 10 minutes later, the graphic was posted to Trump’s Truth Social account, according to Politico. That apparently angered Trump’s aides, with Politico characterizing it as “bad politics and bad policy.”
The idea of the 30-year mortgage was that it allowed people to live in and “own” their homes, even if it took a significant portion of someone’s life to pay it off. At the end of the mortgage, the person would at least have ownership of a property, even if they paid much more than it was worth in the end. The idea of the 50-year mortgage takes this to the extreme, especially with the median age of first-time home buyers in the U.S. currently at 40. And the only people who would be taking out 50-year mortgages would be the people in the most precarious financial positions, which means they’d be most likely to default. Even if a borrower made good on their loan agreement, the prospect of them ever actually owning the property would be slim.
Trump was asked by Laura Ingraham on Fox News about the proposal, and he didn’t back down from the idea. “All it means is you pay less per month,” Trump said. “Pay it over a longer period of time. It’s not like a big factor. It might help a little bit.”
And all of this ridiculousness brings us to the idea of the 15-year car loan. It’s a joke, but plenty of high-profile X accounts seemed to think it was real, including Unusual Whales and Polymarket. When one account racked up 1 million views and faced skepticism from other users, she linked to a tweet from AF Post that she suggested was some proof the White House was considering it.
In reality, AF Post (America First Post) isn’t a real, credible news outlet. It’s affiliated with white supremacist Nick Fuentes, and it posts fake garbage all the time. But AF Post has a blue checkmark, which anyone can buy for $8 from Elon Musk, and some people are under the illusion that it still carries some weight of “verification.”
The “Thelma Johnson” account often shares fake White House announcements, so the next time you see something like that, which sounds too good to be true, maybe check that specific account to see if they were the first one to post it. That’s what we do here at Gizmodo whenever we see a ridiculous tweet that reads “this post has been deleted.” There’s one particular prankster who likes to do that one, and we always check their account when something similar goes viral.
European Union regulators on Friday said it is fining Elon Musk’s social media platform X $140 million (120 million euros) for violating regulations aimed at protecting internet users in the trading bloc from digital abuses.
The European Commission said that X breached “transparency obligations” under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The fine represents the EU’s first move to sanction a company for violating the law since the law was enacted in 2022.
In a statement issued Friday, the commission accused X of using its ‘blue checkmark’ in a way that deceives users. Anyone can pay to get the verification, making it hard for users to judge the authenticity of the accounts they engage with on the social media platform, the EU said. This could expose users to scams and “other forms of manipulation by malicious actors,” the commission noted.
The European Commission also took aim at X’s ads repository, which it said fails to meet accessibility requirements under the DSA. Internet platforms in the EU are required to provide a database of all the digital advertisements they have carried, with details such as who paid for them and the intended audience. That goal is to help researchers detect scams, fake ads and coordinated influence campaigns.
X has 60 days to tell the European Commission how it plans to address the group’s concerns.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr took issue with the fine and defended X. “Once again, Europe is fining a successful U.S. tech company for being a successful U.S. tech company,” he wrote on X Friday in a post shared by X owner Elon Musk.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The DSA requires platforms to remove “illegal content,” among other restrictions, with companies that fail to comply at risk of hefty fines. The law has been a thorn in the side of American tech companies and members of the Trump administration, who claim the sweeping rule violates free speech.
During a speech in Munich this February, Vice President J.D. Vance said the EU’s content moderation policies amount to “authoritarian censorship,” according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit think tank.
Considering this, in a recent announcement by Nikita Bier, head of product at X, the platform has introduced an update that allows users to see the country or region where an account is based.
In a couple hours, we’ll be rolling out About This Account globally, allowing you to see the country or region where an account is based.
Despite this, some users are in support of this added feature as it gives users belonging to countries where speech can land them in trouble an opportunity to put forward their thoughts.
Users have always considered Twitter as a platform that allows its users to put forward their voice, their thoughts, and their feelings. While this is important, sometimes bad actors might affect the integrity of a nation or region. Considering this, in a recent announcement by Nikita Bier, head of product at X, the platform has introduced an update that allows users to see the country or region where an account is based.
The Importance of This New Update
The update might seem minor to you, but it can be super useful when you are trying to find someone on ‘X’. Furthermore, X has also mentioned that users will be able to use privacy toggles, which will allow them to show the region of their origin rather than the exact country. This has been done keeping in mind the countries where speech may invite penalties for their users.
In a couple hours, we’ll be rolling out About This Account globally, allowing you to see the country or region where an account is based. This will be accessible by tapping the signup date on profiles.
This is an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town… pic.twitter.com/5d7cX21qGj
The following are the simple steps to find out the country or region of any account on X
1. Open the profile you want to know the origin of.
2. Tap on the joined date of the account
3. You will be able to see the country or region in the ‘Account based in’ section
After this, you will be able to see all the information about the account. This information will include the country or region in which the account is based, along with
The Public Opinion
Since the announcement of this update, many users have been discussing its aspects. Some are saying that it’s a welcome change, while some are thinking about whether it’s a threat to the privacy of the users. The privacy toggle feature has also been a talking point, as it is being considered a loophole that impersonators might misuse to hide their exact country. Despite this, some users are in support of this added feature as it gives users belonging to countries where speech can land them in trouble an opportunity to put forward their thoughts.
FAQs
Q. Can I purchase the Blue tick symbol on ‘X’?
Yes, the blue tick checkmark can be obtained through a paid subscription to ‘X Premium’
Q. I wanted to edit a post after publishing it. Can I do that?
Unfortunately, there isn’t any option to edit a post once you’ve published it, unless you have subscribed to ‘X Premium’. However, keep in mind that the edit window is limited to 1 hour. The edit history will also be visible to the viewers.
Wrapping Up
X’s new update seems useful, but it’s definitely not a flawless implementation yet. We should keep in mind the added privacy toggles as they are both necessary to safeguard people from certain regions and a loophole that can be misused. Let’s hope that the platform manages to polish the rough edges so that this can serve it’s intended purpose without any issues.
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They go by names like @TRUMP_ARMY— or @MAGANationX, and their verified accounts proudly display portraits of President Donald Trump, voter rallies and American flags. And they’re constantly posting about U.S. politics to their followers, sounding like diehard fans of the president.
But after a weekend update to the social media platform X, it’s now clear that the owners of these accounts, and many others, are located in regions such as South Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.
Elon Musk’s X unveiled a feature Saturday that lets users see where an account is based. Online sleuths and experts quickly found that many popular accounts posting in support of the MAGA movement to thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, are based outside the United States — raising concerns about foreign influence on U.S. politics.
Researchers at NewsGuard, a firm that tracks online misinformation, identified several popular accounts — purportedly run by Americans interested in politics – that instead were based in Eastern Europe, Asia or Africa.
The accounts were leading disseminators of some misleading and polarizing claims about U.S. politics, including ones that said Democrats bribed the moderators of a 2024 presidential debate.
Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, announced Saturday that the social media platform is rolling out an “About This Account” tool, which lets users see the country or region where an account is based. To find an account’s location, tap or click the signup date displayed on the profile.
“This is an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square. We plan to provide many more ways for users to verify the authenticity of the content they see on X,” Bier wrote.
In countries with punitive speech restrictions, a privacy tool on X lets account holders only show their region rather than a specific country. So instead of India, for instance, an account can say it is based in South Asia.
Bier said Sunday that after an update to the tool, it would 99.99% accurate, though this could not be independently verified. Accounts, for instance, can use a virtual private network, or VPN, to mask their true location. On some accounts, there’s a notice saying the location data may not be accurate, either because the account uses a VPN or because some internet providers use proxies automatically, without action by the user.
“Location data will always be something to use with caution,” said Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech and a former director of the International Fact-Checking Network. “Its usefulness probably peaks now that it was just exposed, and bad actors will adapt. Meta has had similar information for a while and no one would suggest that misinformation has been eliminated from Facebook because of it.”
Some of the accounts supported slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk as well as President Donald Trump’s children. Many of the accounts were adorned with U.S. flags or made comments suggesting they were American. An account called “@BarronTNews_,” for instance, is shown as being located in “Eastern Europe (Non-EU),” even though the display location on its profile says “Mar A Lago.” The account, which has more than 580,000 followers, posted on Tuesday that “This is a FAN account, 100 % independent, run by one guy who loves this country and supports President Trump with everything I’ve got.”
The location data for this X account with Charlie Kirk’s photo says it is based in a non-EU Eastern European country.
via X
NewsGuard also found evidence that some X users are spreading misinformation about the location feature itself, incorrectly accusing some accounts of being operated from abroad when they’re actually used by Americans. Investigators found several instances where one user created fake screenshots that appear to suggest an account was created overseas.
It’s not always clear what the motives of the accounts. While some may be state actors, it’s likely that many are financially motivated, posting commentary, memes and videos to draw engagement.
“For the most visible accounts unmasked this week, money is probably the main motivator,” Mantzarlis said. “That doesn’t mean that X — as documented extensively by prior work done by academic and nonprofit organizations that are being attacked and defunded — isn’t also a target for state actors.
Users were divided over the new ability to see an account’s location information, with some questioning whether it went too far.
“Isn’t this kind of an invasion of privacy?” One X user wrote. “No one needs to see this info.”
We can debate the worthiness of Elon Musk’s accomplishments—building up Tesla, hollowing out the government, shooting for Mars—but we can all agree that his insistence on being seen as funny is his most grating quality.
From the constant 4:20 references to his quote tweet “dunks” to awarding “Certified Bangers” badges to silly X posts, Musk’s desperation for validation knows no bounds. It can get pretty annoying when the richest guy on earth makes a joke and then awkwardly eyes the room waiting for everyone to laugh.
But over the weekend, I was intrigued when a clip emerged of Musk telling Joe Rogan that using Grok’s Unhinged Mode to deliver an “epic vulgar roast” is a surefire way to “make people really laugh at a party.”
“Point the camera at them, and now do a vulgar roast of this person … then keep saying, ‘no, no, make it even more vulgar. Use forbidden words,’” Musk excitedly tells Rogan in the clip taken from their three-hour-plus conversation published on Rogan’s podcast in October. “Eventually it’s like, holy fuck, you know. I mean it’s trying to jam a rocket up your ass and have it explode. It’s next level. Beyond fucking belief,” he continues, chuckling and even raising his arms above his head at the mere thought.
The best roast jokes tend to be smart, reflect a familiarity with the person being roasted, and contain just the right amount of mean. It’s not a task one would think a large language model would be great at. But, with Thanksgiving and holiday season on the horizon, I figured why not test Musk’s claim that Grok can deliver a foul-mouthed razz with the best of them? I gave it a test spin at the office by turning Grok loose on my colleagues. (I do not recommend anyone else do this at work.)
Three of my coworkers and I set up shop in my boss’s office so I could privately undertake the embarrassing task of telling Grok to roast all of us one by one. I used Musk’s exact instructions, “forbidden words” and all.
Admittedly, we all burst out laughing when Grok told me my bangs looked like “pubic hair.” But it got tedious fast, with all four of us getting variations of the same sophomoric disses including: looking like a lumberjack’s “discard pile” or “crusty asshole” depending on the amount of vulgarity I encouraged; looking like a “goddamn librarian”; looking like a “thrift store tragedy”; wearing glasses from a “hipster’s landfill.” Eventually, these common themes culminated in one of us being described as a “tweed-wearing hipster who fucked up a lumberjack audition.” Grok advised the roastee to sit up straight “before those jeans rip open and expose your sad, corduroy-loving ass.”
For all the talk of being “unhinged”—keep in mind this is a chatbot that knows how to take things off the rails; it once referred to itself as “MechaHitler”—these results are downright boring. In fact, when I started a draft of this story, my autocorrect changed the Google Doc name from “Grok roast” to “Grim roast.” I didn’t bother correcting it.
A new feature on X has revealed that a number of major MAGA accounts on the platform are operated by people based overseas. And in the days since these accounts were exposed, President Donald Trump has continued boosting several of them.
Many of the accounts, which have large followings and claim to be conservative people based in Texas or “America First” accounts “promoting good resisting evil,” are actually operated everywhere from Chile and Nigeria to Russia and across Eastern Europe.
These accounts largely post about divisive issues, including immigration, gender, and Israel. In one instance, a verified account called MAGA NATION with almost 400,000 followers and the American flag in its screen name was revealed to be operated from a non-EU country in Eastern Europe. Many of the accounts feature the names of members of the Trump family, including an Ivanka Trump news account with over 1 million followers that was based in Nigeria. The account has since been suspended.
On Saturday, Trump shared on Truth Social a screenshot of an X post from an account called “Fan Trump Army.” The account has over 500,000 followers and features an image of Trump as its profile picture. The account operator, according to the new X location feature, is based in India. The account is followed by several people convicted for their parts in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as well as disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
In recent days, the account holder changed their bio to read: “An Indian who loves America, President Trump, Musk!” An earlier version of the account’s bio, however, made no mention of the account being run by someone in India.
On Sunday, Trump shared another screenshot of an X post on Truth Social, this time from a verified X account with the screen name: “Commentary Donald J. Trump.”
“Would you support the idea of foreign-born citizens be barred from running for office? Yes or No,” reads the screenshot. The post also featured a picture of Representative Ilhan Omar with Omar Fateh, a Somali-American lawmaker in Minnesota who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Minneapolis earlier this month. The account has a picture of the president as its profile picture with a bald eagle in front of the American flag as its background picture. According to X’s new feature, the account appears to be run from somewhere in Africa. (In some cases, X doesn’t specify the country, only the continent or region.)
In responses to Trump’s post, many called for a ban on foreign-born citizens holding political office, with some posters going further and calling for Omar and Fateh to be deported.
A worldwide outage at the network of cybersecurity firm Cloudflare Inc. has been resolved after several hours of disruption on Tuesday. The outage had taken down the websites for everything from the chief US energy regulator, ChatGPT, the New Jersey transit authority and the social-media platform X. ChatGPT and X were among the services that […]
How to track Doppler radar, traffic and rain totals for California storm
Follow the storm with interactive radar and see the latest traffic conditions and rain totals.
TIME RIGHT NOW IS 7 A.M. TODAY IS ALSO A WEATHER IMPACT DAY, AND HERE’S A LIVE LOOK FROM SACRAMENTO, RANCHO CORDOVA AND STOCKTON WHERE RAIN IS COMING DOWN RIGHT NOW. IT ALL STARTED EARLY THIS MORNING AND IS EXPECTED TO LAST THROUGHOUT THE DAY. HEADING INTO THE WEEK, LET’S GET WEATHER CHECK NOW WITH METEOROLOGIST KELLY CURRAN. YEAH, THAT RAIN HAS BEEN COMING DOWN THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THE OVERNIGHT HOURS, ESPECIALLY AROUND MODESTO, PICKING UP MORE THAN THREE QUARTERS OF AN INCH JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT. AND IT’S BEEN RAINING EVER SINCE. NOW THIS IS A LIVE LOOK OUTSIDE IN RANCHO CORDOVA, WHERE NOT ONLY ARE WE DEALING WITH THOSE SCATTERED SHOWERS, WE’RE ALSO DEALING WITH SOME AREAS OF PATCHY MORNING FOG. WE’RE GOING TO SEE SCATTERED SHOWERS ON AND OFF THROUGHOUT THE DAY TODAY. BUT THEN A SECOND STORM ARRIVES TONIGHT, BRINGING IN EVEN HEAVIER BAND OF SHOWERS. AND THEN ON TOP OF ALL THAT, WE’RE GOING TO BE DEALING WITH SNOW SHOWERS IN THE SIERRA, WHICH WILL LIKELY PROMPT CHAIN CONTROLS. WE ALREADY HAVE A FEW OUT THERE, BUT MORE WILL LIKELY BE HAPPENING, ESPECIALLY AS THAT SNOW LEVEL CONTINUES TO DROP. SO LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT THE RADAR FIRST. AND YOU CAN SEE FROM I-5 EASTWARD. THAT’S WHERE WE’RE REALLY CONTINUING TO SEE THOSE RAIN SHOWERS. NOW YUBA CITY STARTING TO DRY OUT NOW. STILL A FEW LIGHT SHOWERS AROUND CHICO SACRAMENTO DOWNTOWN AREA. THE SHOWERS ARE STARTING TO LET UP, BUT WE’RE STILL SEEING MORE FURTHER TO THE EAST. AUBURN GRASS VALLEY LIGHT RAIN SHOWERS, DONNER SUMMIT SEEING SNOW AND POLLOCK PINES. WE HAVE SOME MODERATE TO HEAVY RAIN COMING DOWN, INDICATED BY THOSE SHADES OF YELLOW HEADING FURTHER TO THE SOUTH AROUND STOCKTON WE’RE SEEING LIGHT TO MODERATE RAIN SHOWERS. SAME AROUND GALT. MODESTO CONTINUES TO SEE THAT LIGHT RAIN, AND THEN YOU CAN SEE HERE FROM SNELLING ALL THE WAY UP THROUGH SONORA AND ARNOLD UP TOWARD 88. THAT’S WHERE WE’RE SEEING THAT BAND OF YELLOW INDICATING AGAIN, THE MORE MODERATE SHOWER ACTIVITY. AND THIS IS MOVING ITS WAY EASTWARD. WE’LL BE SWITCHING OVER TO SNOW AS IT GOES UP IN ELEVATION. SACRAMENTO 56 DEGREES. THAT’S THE CURRENT TEMPERATURE. WE’RE AT 52 IN AUBURN. TRUCKEE 36. AND THESE TEMPERATURES ARE NOT GOING TO BE WARMING UP MUCH TODAY. WINDS AT THE MOMENT NOT TOO STRONG, BUT THEY HAVE SWITCHED DIRECTIONS. SO THEY’RE OUT OF THE SOUTH. WE’RE GOING TO SEE EVEN STRONGER WINDS AS WE GET INTO THE EVENING HOURS. HIGHS TODAY. WE’RE ONLY GOING TO MAKE IT INTO THE UPPER 50 IN THE SACRAMENTO AREA. WE’RE GOING TO BE TALKING MORE ABOUT THAT COMING UP IN ABOUT TEN MINUTES. KELLY, THANK YOU SO MUCH. AND LET’S GET A CHECK RIGHT NOW. OUTSIDE LIVE TRACKER THREE ON THE ROADS THIS MORNING IN KCRA 3’S. ERIN HEFT IS LIVE IN PLACER COUNTY. AND AARON WHAT ARE YOU SEEING RIGHT NOW? OH, IT IS SLICK THIS MORNING, LETICIA. AND VERY MUCH CHANGING CONDITIONS AS WE GET HIGHER IN ELEVATION. SO LET ME SHOW YOU OUTSIDE OF OUR WINDSHIELD. THIS THE CAMERA THAT’S STILL INSIDE THE VEHICLE AND A SHOT OF THE ROAD SO YOU CAN SEE LOTS OF WATER KICKING UP OFF OF THE INTERSTATE RIGHT NOW. AND THEN OUR ROOF CAMERA, WHICH IS THE CAMERA LOCATED ON TOP OF THE VEHICLE, YOU CAN SEE QUITE DAMP OUT THERE. SO THINGS YOU NEED TO BE AWARE OF IS THAT YES, IT IS VERY WET, SPECIFICALLY THROUGH PLACER COUNTY AS WE’VE LEFT SACRAMENTO AND NOW PAST BAXTER AND ARE MAKING OUR WAY EVEN HIGHER. STILL VERY WET. SO NOTHING THAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT BEING SLICK FOR ANY ICY REASONS, BUT THAT CHANGES WHEN IT COMES TO KINGVALE BECAUSE KINGVALE THERE ARE TWO LEVEL CHAIN RESTRICTIONS RIGHT NOW, SO JUST BE AWARE THAT THESE ROADS GET A LITTLE SLICK UP THERE. IT’S A VERY SHORT AREA THAT’S IN CHAIN RESTRICTIONS AND CHAIN CONTROLS, BUT THERE ARE SNOWPLOWS OUT. AND FOR MORE SPECIFIC AREA OF THAT, THAT WOULD BE FROM KINGVALE TO AROUND THE DONNER LAKE AREA. SO THAT’S WHERE THE R2 CHAIN CONTROLS ARE. THAT’S WHERE THE MAJORITY OF THE TOW TRUCK EXCUSE ME, SNOWPLOWS ARE AT THE MOMENT. SO THAT GIVES US AN INDICATOR THAT THAT’S THE AREA THAT’S MOST SLICK. BUT PLEASE BE AWARE IF YOU’RE WORKING YOUR WAY UP INTERSTATE 80, JUST BE PREPARED. IT’S THAT KIND OF SEASON WHERE YOU NEED TO HAVE CHAINS IN YOUR VEHICLE, OR YOU HAVE TO HAVE FOUR WHEEL DRIVE. IT’S THE BEGINNING OF THE SEASON WHERE INTERSTATE 80 GETS A LITTLE DICEY. JUST BE PREPARED. LETICIA. THINGS CHANGING INDEED. ERIN, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR LIVE REPORT. WE’LL CHECK BACK IN WITH YOU. AND REMEMBER, YOU CAN ALWAYS GET THE LATEST WEATHER UPDATES BY DOWNLOADING THE KCRA 3 APP.
How to track Doppler radar, traffic and rain totals for California storm
Follow the storm with interactive radar and see the latest traffic conditions and rain totals.
KCRA 3’s weather team issued Impact Days for Sunday and Monday because of how wet and windy conditions will affect outdoor activities and travel for the Valley, Foothills and Sierra. See the latest forecast here. Share your weather photos and videos at kcra.com/upload.Below are resources to find live, interactive radar and traffic maps on KCRA.com to help keep you prepared. You can also see the latest rain totals below. Download our app for the latest breaking news and severe weather alertsHere is where you can download our app for the latest weather alerts.Track real-time traffic updates in Northern CaliforniaClick here to see our interactive traffic map.Track California Doppler radar Click here to see our interactive radar map.)Track California highway road conditions hereHere is where you can search Caltrans road conditions by highway and see if chain controls are in effect. Track the rain totals below Here are key websites to prepare for and track California power outages.Preparing for power outages: Ready.gov explains how to prepare for a power outage and what to do when returning from one here.Keeping informed when you’ve lost power and cellphone service: How to find a National Weather Service radio station near you.Here is how to sign up for CalAlerts emergency alert notifications for any county in California.Track PG&E power outages here. Track SMUD outages here. Track power outages across all California counties. Follow our KCRA weather team on social mediaMeteorologist Tamara Berg on Facebook, Instagram and X. Meteorologist Heather Waldman on Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok.Meteorologist Kelly Curran on X, Facebook and Instagram.Meteorologist Dirk Verdoorn on Facebook.Meteorologist Ophelia Young on Facebook, X and Instagram. Watch our forecasts on TV or onlineHere’s where to find our latest video forecast. You can also watch a livestream of our latest newscast here. The banner on our website turns red when we’re live.We’re also streaming on the Very Local app for Roku, Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV. See more coverage of top California stories here | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
KCRA 3’s weather team issued Impact Days for Sunday and Monday because of how wet and windy conditions will affect outdoor activities and travel for the Valley, Foothills and Sierra.
Below are resources to find live, interactive radar and traffic maps on KCRA.com to help keep you prepared. You can also see the latest rain totals below.
Download our app for the latest breaking news and severe weather alerts
Although she effortlessly whacked Musk multiple times, Oates isn’t overly concerned with the billionaire. She posts frequently on both BlueSky and X about a range of topics, and is more than happy to respond to fans and critics alike on the platforms. Since publicly humiliating Musk and sending him to a tizzy, she’s gone on to tweet political musings about Zohran Mamdani, and Charlie Kirk, as well as less fraught fare about Faulkner and Hemingway and a photo of her beloved cat.
Those who are new to the online life of Joyce Carol Oates may be surprised to learn that she’s been doing these for years. At this point, she’s arguably as prolific a poster as she is a novelist, logging more than 180,00 posts on her official X account @JoyceCarolOates as of the publication of this story. Years ago, she was more likely to be the dunker than a dunkee: Oates experienced the other side of viral fame in 2014, when she loosed this hot take on another prolific but controversial writer. “Though Woody Allen has been much denounced, very likely many of his denouncers greatly admire Nabokov’s ‘Lolita.’” No contradiction?” she tweeted (it was still called tweeting back then). The false equivalency didn’t go over well; at the time, the public flogged Oates for her support of Allen. “Thats not the same at all thats terrible youre terrible but thank you for inventing oatmeal,” read one viral response, which ratioed Oates’s original tweet. (And yes, despite her last name, Joyce Carol Oates didn’t invent oatmeal.)
Years later, Oates made another Twitter faux pas, taking a gravely serious stance on innocent Halloween decorations. “You can always recognize a place in which no one is feeling much or any grief for a lost loved one & death, dying, & everyone you love decomposing to bones is just a joke,” posted Oates on October 1, 2021, drawing a wide variety of scornful reactions.
Oates kept posting through it—and now it seems that was the correct strategy. Time heals all wounds on the internet—time, and banger tweets that eviscerate the world’s richest man. Joyce Carol Oates? More like Joyce Carol Roasts.
Nearly a decade after going offline, Vine is (sort of) back and, in a truly bizarre twist, Jack Dorsey is at least partially responsible. An early Twitter employee has released a beta version of a rebooted Vine — now called “Divine” — that revives the app’s six-second videos and includes a portion of the original app’s archive.
The project comes from Evan Henshaw-Plath, a former Twitter employee who goes by “Rabble,” and has backing from Dorsey’s nonprofit “and Other Stuff,” which funds experimental social media apps built on the open source nostr protocol. Rabble has so far managed to resurrect about 170,000 videos from the original Vine thanks to an old archive created before Twitter shut down the app in 2017. In an FAQ on Divine’s website, he says that he also hopes to restore “millions” of user comments and profile photos associated with those original posts as well.
But Divine is more than just a home for decade-old clips. New users can create six-second looping videos of their own for the platform. The app also has many elements that will be familiar to people who have used Bluesky or other decentralized platforms, including customizable controls for content moderation and multiple feed algorithms to choose from. The site’s FAQ says Divine plans to support custom, user-created algorithms too.
Divine is also taking a pretty strong stance against AI-generated content. The app will have built-in AI detection tools that will add badges to content that’s been verified as not created or edited with AI tools. And, according to TechCrunch, the app will block uploads of suspected AI content.
“We’re in the middle of an AI takeover of social media,” Divine explains on its website. New apps like Sora are entirely AI-generated. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are increasingly flooded with AI slop—videos that look real but were never captured by a camera, people who don’t exist, scenarios that never happened. Divine is fighting back. We’re creating a space where human creativity is celebrated and protected, where you can trust that what you’re watching was made by a real person with a real camera, not generated by an algorithm.”
While all that may sound intriguing, Divine has a long way to go before it can accomplish all that. The app hasn’t made it onto either app store yet, though it’s already added 10,000 people to an iOS beta, according to its founder. In the meantime, you can also browse some of the app’s videos, including some old Vine posts, on its website, though not all of the videos are working properly at the moment.
Still, any kind of reboot is good news for fans of the original, who have long hoped the app might make a comeback. Elon Musk has suggested more than once that he would revive Vine in some way, but has yet to follow through.
As generative AI content starts to fill our social apps, a project to bring back Vine’s six-second looping videos is launching with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s backing. On Thursday, a new app called diVine will give access to more than 100,000 archived Vine videos, restored from an older backup that was created before Vine’s shutdown.
The app won’t just exist as a walk down memory lane; it will also allow users to create profiles and upload their own new Vine videos. However, unlike on traditional social media, where AI content is often haphazardly labeled, diVine will flag suspected generative AI content and prevent it from being posted.
Image Credits:daVine
DiVine’s creation was financed by Jack Dorsey’s nonprofit, “and Other Stuff,” formed in May 2025. The new effort is focused on funding experimental open source projects and other tools that have the potential to transform the social media landscape.
To build diVine, Evan Henshaw-Plath, an early Twitter employee and member of “and Other Stuff,” explored the Vine archive. After Twitter announced it was shutting down the short video app in 2016, its videos were backed up by a group called the Archive Team. This community archiving project is not affiliated with Archive.org, but is rather a collective that works together to save internet websites that are in danger of being lost.
Unfortunately, the group had saved Vine’s content as large, 40-50 GB binary files, which wouldn’t be accessible to someone who just wanted to watch some old Vine videos. The fact the archive existed prompted Evan Henshaw-Plath (who goes by the name Rabble) to see if it was possible to extract the old Vine content to serve as the basis for a new Vine-like mobile app.
Image Credits:daVine
“So basically, I’m like, can we do something that’s kind of nostalgic?” he told TechCrunch. “Can we do something that takes us back, that lets us see those old things, but also lets us see an era of social media where you could either have control of your algorithms, or you could choose who you follow, and it’s just your feed, and where you know that it’s a real person that recorded the video?”
Rabble spent a couple of months writing big data scripts and figuring out how the files worked, then reconstructed them along with the information on the old Vine users and the user engagement with the videos, like their views and even a subset of the original comments.
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“I wasn’t able to get all of them out, but I was able to get a lot out and basically reconstruct these Vines and these Vine users, and give each person a new user [profile] on this open network,” he said.
Rabble estimates the app contains a “good percentage” of the most popular Vine videos, but not a large number of the long tail. For instance, he says there were millions of K-pop-focused videos that were never even archived.
Image Credits:daVine
“We have about 150,000 to 200,000 of the videos from about 60,000 of the creators,” he noted, adding that, originally, Vine had a couple of million users and a few million creators by comparison.
Vine creators, who still own the copyright to their work, can send diVine a DMCA takedown request if they want their Vines removed, or they can verify they’re the account holder by demonstrating they’re still in possession of the social media accounts that were originally listed in their Vine bio. (This process isn’t automated, though, so there could be a delay if a large number of creators try to do this at once.)
Once they have their account back, they can also choose to post new videos or upload their old content that the restoration process missed.
To verify that new video uploads are human-made, Rabble is using technology from the human rights nonprofit the Guardian Project, which helps to verify that content was actually recorded on a smartphone, along with other checks.
Image Credits:daVine
Plus, because it’s built on Nostr, a decentralized protocol favored by Dorsey, and is open source, developers can set up and create their own apps and run their own hosts, relays, and media servers.
“Nostr – the underlying open source protocol being used by diVine – is empowering developers to create a new generation of apps without the need for VC-backing, toxic business models or huge teams of engineers,” Jack Dorsey said in a provided statement. “The reason I funded the non-profit, and Other Stuff, is to allow creative engineers like Rabble to show what’s possible in this new world, by using permissionless protocols which can’t be shut down based on the whim of a corporate owner.”
Twitter/X’s current owner, Elon Musk, has also promised to bring back Vine, having announced in August that the company discovered the old video archive. But so far, nothing has been publicly launched. The Dorsey-backed diVine project, meanwhile, believes that because the content is coming from an online archive and creators still own their copyrights, it’s fair use.
Image Credits:daVine
Rabble also believes there’s consumer demand for this type of non-AI, social experience, despite the popularity of generative AI content and widespread adoption of apps like OpenAI’s Sora and Meta AI.
“Companies see the AI engagement and they think that people want it,” explained Rabble. “They’re confusing, like — yes, people engage with it; yes, we’re using these things — but we also want agency over our lives and over our social experiences. So I think there’s a nostalgia for the early Web 2.0 era, for the blogging era, for the era that gave us podcasting, the era that you were building communities, instead of just gaming the algorithm,” he said.
DiVine is available on both iOS and Android at diVine.video.
