By Hadas Gold, CNN

(CNN) — A new X feature over the weekend revealed that several pro-Trump accounts with large followings are not US-based, despite content and some bios suggesting otherwise.

On X account profiles, clicking on an account’s date of creation reveals the country or region where the account is based. Users can toggle a privacy button to just show a region instead of a specific country.

CNN could not independently verify the locations of these accounts.

The revelation not only underscores how many foreign actors use social media to try to shape American society, it also shows how those kinds of influence attempts could grow in the future — especially with strong financial incentives for accounts to try to rack up user engagement.

X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, posted that the change “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.”

Almost immediately, users began to flag accounts, many of them supporting President Donald Trump and his policies, not based in the United States.

MAGA Nation, an account that has nearly 400,000 followers, boasts it’s “America first” and a “Patriot Voice for We The People.” Its feed is filled with pro-Trump news, commentary and posts to farm engagement, like polls. But its X account information says it’s based in Eastern Europe (non-EU).

A user named “America First,” with a photo of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, says it is “Promoting Good Resisting Evil!!” in its bio. “Good morning X! God Bless America!” the account posted on November 17. But the account, which has more than 67,000 followers, is based out of Bangladesh.

Many of these accounts share similar features: generic pro-America imagery and photos of Trump, his family or members of his administration. The posts are about news of the day, recycled clips from other media outlets and questions or polls to encourage responses — engagement that can lead to higher payouts from X.

Trump himself has reposted several of these accounts on his Truth Social platform. On Sunday, he reposted from an account called “Commentary Donald J. Trump” asking: ”Would you support the idea of foreign-born citizens be barred from running for office? Yes or no” atop a photo of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Minnesota State Senator Omar Fateh. But the account itself is based in Africa.

Bier warned that the feature is not foolproof, as travel, as well as VPNs, could affect where the accounts say they are based.

But experts say it’s not surprising that so many accounts with US political content, some with huge followings, appear to be based outside of the United States.

“We have a history of foreign people trying to use social media for foreign influence … and there are multiple reasons why you might expect foreign actors to want to intervene in politics, both political and economic reasons,” Joshua Tucker, a professor at Wilf Department of Politics at New York University, told CNN.

In the 2016 presidential election, for example, the Russian government backed efforts to influence political discourse online through fake personas and accounts.

But there’s also a financial incentive, as X pays creators on its platform by engagement. The more followers an account has, and the more those followers interact with an account’s content, the bigger the payouts. And political content plays well online, said Jake Shapiro, a professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University.

“There’s some people who hop on lots of different issues that can get attention and therefore drive revenue and monetization and ads, and then there are people who have political goals, both benign, they want to advance different social justice issues, things like that, and more maligned foreign countries that have organizations that are dedicated to trying to shape US politics,” Shapiro said.

X did not return a request for comment.

The implications for the feature go beyond exposing foreign accounts trying to profit from influencing American politics. In Iran, X is blocked, although Iranians can use VPNs to get around the ban. However, Radio Free Europe pointed out that the new feature exposes which Iran-based accounts do not need a VPN, which some in Iran are allowed to use. According to the BBC, several accounts promoting Scottish independence were revealed to be based in the Netherlands but were accessing X via the Android app in Iran. Researchers have previously reported that Iran has backed an online influence network promoting Scottish independence.

The incentives for X to reveal user locations may not just be about transparency, Shapiro said.

“I think X and many other companies have an existential problem that’s coming, which is it’s going to become increasingly hard to figure out what is real human and what is AI agents.?And it’s unclear that advertisers are going to be willing to pay for the attention of AI agents,” Shapiro said. “For the companies, there’s a real interest emerging in being able to sort out what’s real from what’s not, and for users and doing the same.”

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