A day after Elon Musk finally removed blue checkmarks from legacy verified accounts, some weeks after the original deadline, we’ve seen a Twitter U-turn on another of his changes: the “government-funded media” label applied to many media accounts …
Many Chinese media organizations are effectively simply fronts for the Chinese Communist Party, so when Twitter began labeling their accounts as “China state-affiliated media” back in 2020, few eyebrows were raised.
However, the company recently began applying a “Government-funded media“ label to news organizations like NPR, CBC, and the BBC. In none of these cases was the label accurate. The label was then changed to “Publicly funded” – which was accurate.
Reuters reports that the company has now apparently removed all such labels from media Twitter accounts – including state-owned Chinese ones.
Twitter dropped the “Government-funded Media” label from the accounts of U.S.-based National Public Radio (NPR), British Broadcasting Corp and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
It also dropped the “China state-affiliated media” tag on the accounts of Xinhua News as well as of journalists associated with government-backed publications.
Musk pays for some blue checkmarks
When Musk first announced that it would be removing blue checkmarks from “notable” accounts, inviting people to pay $8/month for a Twitter Blue subscription in order to retain them, the response wasn’t quite what he would have hoped.
Literally every legacy verified Twitter account owner I know said that we wouldn’t be paying, and some high-profile ones took offense. LeBron James, Stephen King, and William Shatner were among those who took issue with the policy.
Author Stephen King was surprised to find that he had retained his blue checkmark, and that the label said he was a Twitter Blue subscriber.
It was the same story with other high-profile accounts. Musk told King he was welcome, and subsequently revealed that he was paying for this and some other accounts personally.
Twitter users are of course enjoying their popcorn with this.
Photo: Aral Tasher/Unsplash
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