Twitter has removed labels describing global media organizations as government- or state-funded, a move that comes after the Elon Musk-owned platform began removing blue verification marks from accounts that don’t pay monthly fees.
Among those organizations that are no longer classified is National Public Radio in the United States, which announced last week that it would stop using Twitter after designating its main account as “state media,” a term also used to designate media controlled by Russia and China. .
Later, the designation was changed to “state-funded media,” but National Public Radio, which relies on a very small part of the US government for its funding, said it was still disinformation.
National Public Radio account before it was de-authenticated
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Swedish Public Broadcasting made similar decisions to ditch Twitter.
On Friday, the “government-funded” tag disappeared from the CBC channel’s account, along with the “state-owned” tag from other media accounts, including Russia’s Sputnik and Russia Today, and China’s Xinhua.
On Thursday, several prominent Twitter users also lost their blue authentication tags that helped them authenticate their identity and distinguish them from scammers.
Twitter had about 300,000 users verified under the blue verification system, many of them journalists, athletes and public figures.
The verification process was used to mean that the account was verified by Twitter.
Notable users who lost their blue checkmarks on Thursday included Beyonce, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former President Donald Trump.
The cost of maintaining tags ranges between $8 per month for individual users, and a price starting from $1,000 per month for documenting an enterprise account, in addition to $50 per month for each account affiliated with an entity or employee.
Twitter does not document individual accounts, as was the case with the previous blue tick, which was granted during the period before Musk’s administration of the platform.
