Twitter Removes Labels Describing Global Media Organizations, Sparking Debate Over Transparency and Accuracy

Twitter has recently removed labels describing global media organizations as government-funded or state-affiliated. This follows the platform’s decision to strip blue verification checkmarks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee.

One of the organizations affected by the change was National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States. Last week, NPR announced that it would stop using Twitter after its main account was labeled as state-affiliated media. This term is used to identify media outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments, such as Russia and China.

Twitter later changed the label to “government-funded media,” but NPR argued that this was still misleading. NPR receives only a tiny fraction of its funding from the government.

The removal of the labels has been met with criticism from some, who argue that it is important to identify government-funded media outlets. Others have argued that the labels were too broad and could be used to unfairly target legitimate media outlets.

Twitter has yet to comment on the removal of the labels. It remains to be seen how the platform will address the issue going forward.