Twitter is no longer labeling any accounts as “state-affiliated media” or “government-funded media,” a change that comes after organizations such as NPR and PBS objected to the descriptions and suspended their activity on the Elon Musk-owned social network in protest.
When NPR reporter Bobby Allyn emailed Musk about the decision to drop media labels, the CEO responded, “This was Walter Isaacson’s suggestion.” Isaacson, who has written biographies of Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin, is currently working on a Musk biography.
NPR (8.8 million followers) and PBS (2.2 million) had not resumed posting to their Twitter accounts as of this writing, after suspending activity earlier this month.
On Friday, it appeared that Twitter had removed all “state-affiliated” and “government-funded” labels from the site, including those used by NPR, PBS, the BBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Russia Today (RT), China Xinhua News, CGTN (China Global Television Network), and Iran’s Press TV.
Meanwhile, at Musk’s request, Twitter recently removed “visibility filtering” restrictions on government accounts in Russia, China, and Iran, according to NPR, citing two anonymous ex-Twitter employees. These were designed to keep state-sponsored propaganda from those regimes from spreading.
An email to Twitter’s PR account seeking comment received no response.
The debate over Twitter’s labels on publicly funded media accounts arose after the social network added labels to several organizations that did not previously have one. This included naming NPR’s main account “US state-affiliated media”; Twitter later changed that to “government-funded media.” NPR was unconvinced, announcing that it would suspend Twitter activity because the label “undermine[s]our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent.” According to NPR, federal grants account for less than 1% of its annual operating budget on average. PBS also boycotted Twitter over the “government-funded media” label.
The removal of the “state-affiliated media” and “government-funded media” labels by Twitter on Friday came just one day after the social network revoked verified blue check-mark status from thousands of accounts belonging to celebrities, athletes, politicians, and other “notable” figures granted under the company’s previous ownership. The move was intended to increase revenue from Twitter Blue ($8/month and up) subscriptions, but Musk has also framed it as democratizing the user-verification process.
Following the purge, some high-profile users still had the badges; it was unclear which ones were paying Twitter for the badge. Musk stated that he is “personally” paying for Twitter Blue on behalf of LeBron James, Stephen King, and William Shatner, all of whom have expressed dissatisfaction with the decision to charge for verification.
