SUMMARY
- Twitter ditches labels for government officials and state-affiliated media
- Blue checkmark exodus raises concerns about misinformation
- Media outlets like NPR, BBC, and CBC lose controversial "state-affiliated" designation
Elon Musk's Twitter has casually tossed aside those fancy labels that used to show which accounts belonged to government peeps and state-funded media. Even President Joe Biden's account lost its authentic tag – talk about a plot twist!
Just a day earlier, the blue checkmark club got a bit smaller when legacy verified users got kicked out. Now, there's a buzz that misinformation could be party-crashing Twitter way more often.
So, on Friday, when you checked out Prez Joe Biden's, First Lady Jill Biden's, and VP Kamala Harris's accounts, there was no sign they were official government peeps. The same happened to Russia and China's media outlets and journalists, including the Russian Prez's account that's been ghosting since Ukraine got invaded.
These tags for government officials and state-affiliated media were first brought to the scene in 2020 to keep political convos on Twitter safe and sound.
But wait, there's more! Some controversial labels that popped up on media accounts earlier this month got the axe too. Twitter marked media outlets like NPR, BBC, and Canadian Broadcasting Corp. as "state-affiliated," which got those execs and journalists all riled up. NPR even decided to stop using Twitter to share its reporting. The thing is, BBC gets its funds from a national TV license, but it's not really "state-affiliated" like RT, which gets money from the Russian government and is basically their propaganda machine.
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