Twitter begins removing ‘government-funded media’ tags, blue checks

Twitter removed the “government-funded media” tag on public broadcasters, including the CBC, on Thursday without explanation.

The move comes after the Global Task Force for Public Media called on Twitter earlier in the day to correct its statements about public broadcasters in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.

A group led by CBC president Catherine Tait said Twitter applied the label without warning to the accounts of CBC/Radio-Canada, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (known as the ABC), the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) and Radio New Zealand (RNZ). .

He noted that Twitter’s own policy defines government-funded media as media that may have government involvement in various editorial content.

WATCH / Explain the objections of public broadcasters:

The task force says that is not the case here, where editorial independence is protected by law and enshrined in editorial policy.

He says the most accurate label is “publicly funded media.”

Twitter initially labeled some accounts with the British Broadcasting Corporation “government-funded media,” but changed it to “publicly funded media” after the BBC objected.

The BBC is also a member of the Global Task Force, as well as France Télévisions, Germany’s ZDF and Sweden’s SVT.

“Labeling in this way misleads audiences about the operational and editorial independence of the government,” the task force said Thursday in a release.

CBC raised the same objection, and Brodie Fenlon, editor-in-chief and executive director of programming and standards for CBC News, explained why this media organization paused its activity on its Twitter account.

“We cannot in good faith continue to post fact-based news and information to Twitter, or engage in it, while the false impression of government involvement in our work is allowed,” Fenlon wrote. “As a news organization committed to truth, facts and accuracy, we cannot abide labels that promote disinformation about who we are and what we do.”

The “Chinese state-affiliated media” tag on the Xinhua News account as well as journalists affiliated with the government-backed publication also disappeared on Friday, a few days after it took effect. Same case for Russia Today and its journalists.

Lost check

Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk made some changes after buying Twitter for $44 billion last October.

One of the changes is removing blue checks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee to maintain them, and it looks like Twitter is starting to make good on that promise on Thursday.

Twitter has around 300,000 verified users under the original blue check system that started around 14 years ago – many of them journalists, athletes and public figures. Along with protecting celebrities from impersonators, one of the main reasons for checking is to provide additional tools to prevent misinformation from impersonating accounts.

WATCH | The trustworthiness of information is an open question in front of:

High-profile users who lost their blue checks on Thursday included Beyoncé, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former president Donald Trump.

One of Musk’s first products after taking over Twitter was to launch a service that offered blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 US a month. But it was quickly inundated by impostor accounts, including those impersonating Nintendo, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Musk’s businesses Tesla and SpaceX, so Twitter had to suspend its service days after launch.

The relaunched service costs $8 per month for web users and $11 per month for iPhone or Android app users. The cost to store a sign ranges from a starting price of $1,000 per month to verify the organization, plus $50 per month for each affiliate or employee account. Twitter does not verify individual accounts, as was the case with previous blue checks provided during the platform’s pre-Musk administration.

Customers should see fewer ads, be able to post longer videos and tweets displayed more clearly.

Uptake is not expected to be a revenue bonanza

It wasn’t just celebrities and journalists who lost their blue checks on Thursday. Many government agencies, non-profit organizations and public service accounts around the world can no longer be verified, raising concerns that Twitter may lose its status as a platform for obtaining accurate and up-to-date information from authentic sources, including in emergency situations.

While Twitter offers a gold check for “verified organizations” and a gray check for government organizations and affiliates, it’s unclear how the platform works, and it didn’t appear Thursday on many previously verified agency and public service accounts.

The official New York City government Twitter account, which previously had a blue check, tweeted on Thursday, “This is the original Twitter account representing New York City Government This is the only @NYCGov account managed by the New York City government” in an attempt to clear up the confusion.

A newly created spoof account with 36 followers, also without a blue check, disagrees: “No, you are not. THIS account is the only real Twitter account representing and managed by the Government of the City of New York.”

Less than five percent of legacy verified accounts appear to have paid to join Twitter Blue as of Thursday, according to an analysis by Travis Brown, a Berlin-based developer of social media tracking software.

Digital intelligence platform Similarweb analyzed the number of people who registered Twitter Blue on desktop computers and only detected 116,000 confirmed registrations last month, which $8 or $11 per month does not represent the main revenue stream. However, the analysis does not count accounts purchased through the mobile app.