Twitter Drops ‘State-Affiliated,’ ‘Government-Funded’ Labels

Facts

• As of Friday, Twitter dropped its "state-affiliated" and "government-funded" labels for media outlets in the latest sweeping change at the influential platform. Outlets like the PRC's Xinhua and Global Times, and Russia's RT were no longer identified as state-affiliated media.¹
• In addition, Twitter has dropped the "Government-funded Media" label from the accounts of US-based National Public Radio (NPR), British Broadcasting Corp (BBC), and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).²
• Twitter, acquired by Elon Musk last year, had long labeled accounts linked to state media or government officials from China and Russia, saying that policy focused on entities that "are the official voice of the nation-state abroad."³
• In a now-deleted webpage on the platform, Twitter defined "government-funded media" as media that "may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content." This triggered controversy regarding the broadcasters' editorial independence.⁴
• Though Twitter has labeled PRC state media and government figures since 2020, the labels for NPR, BBC, CBC, and other organizations only first started appearing this month.⁴
• This comes as Twitter on Thursday removed the blue verified checkmark from the profiles of thousands of high-profile users.⁵

Sources: ¹Al Jazeera, ²Reuters, ³Al Arabiya English, ⁴Forbes, and ⁵ITN.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Caitlin Johnstone. Removing the "government-funded" and "state-affiliated" media labels from the Twitter platform is a good idea. These labels have always been blatantly biased toward the US and its allies, so shouldn't have existed in the first place. It's not Twitter's place to make sure people trust Western propaganda outlets and distrust propaganda outlets from Russia and China; that's the role of a propagandist, not an impartial platform for free communication.
• Narrative B, as provided by Caitlin Johnstone. Twitter's original decision to include "state-affiliated media" was correct. The label should be pinned to outlets like RT and China Daily as well as CIA-created US propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Voice of America. This designation should also be tagged on other outlets which receive far more state funding than NPR, like the UK's BBC, Australia's ABC, Canada's CBC, and Saudi Press Agency. There's no issue with this label as long as Twitter applies the designation consistently and fairly.

Predictions