Twitter erases state-affiliated, government-funded labels from NPR and other accounts

This illustration photo taken in Los Angeles on April 20, 2023, shows Elon Musk’s account on a smartphone. Under Musk as CEO, Twitter has changed how it labels accounts. CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images This illustration photo taken in Los Angeles on April 20, 2023, shows Elon Musk’s account on a smartphone. Under Musk as CEO, Twitter has changed how it labels accounts. CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images Twitter has stopped labeling media organizations as “state-affiliated” and “government-funded,” including NPR, which recently quit the platform over how it was denoted. In a move late Thursday night, the social media platform nixed all labels for a number of media accounts it had tagged, dropping NPR’s “government-funded” tag along with the “state-affiliated” identifier for outlets such as Russia’s RT and Sputnik, as well as China’s Xinhua. CEO Elon Musk told NPR reporter Bobby Allyn via email early Friday morning that Twitter has dropped “all media labels” and that “this was Walter Isaacson’s suggestion.” Isaacson, who wrote the biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs, is said to be finishing a biography on Musk. The policy page describing the labels also disappeared from Twitter’s website.
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