Shortly after beginning to remove the verification icon from the accounts of non-paying users, the online platform Twitter also removed the “government-affiliated” and “government-funded” designations from user accounts of numerous media outlets. This is according to a review published by the AFP news agency today.
According to AFP, a number of media outlets in Western countries as well as Russia, China and other countries no longer displayed these labels on Friday, including the US broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR), the Chinese state news agency Xinhua, the Kremlin-affiliated foreign medium RT and Canada’s public legal broadcaster CBC.
Labeling was initially expanded
The company, which was acquired last year by technology billionaire Elon Musk, had for years labeled media from authoritarian countries such as Russia and China as “government-funded”, but recently extended the label to media that receive state funding but report independently.
NPR and CBC then halted their activity on Twitter, and this week Sweden’s public radio station Sveriges Radio (SR) followed suit. Radio New Zealand also threatened this week to pull Twitter over labeling it “government-funded”.
