Twitter to label Russian and other state-run media accounts as foreign controlled

Twitter will label the accounts of state-controlled media entities, as well as their senior staff and government officials, said the company in a blog post Thursday.

There are no U.S. media outlets on the list.

From the Twitter blog post:

Twitter provides an unmatched way to connect with, and directly speak to public officials and representatives. This direct line of communication with leaders and officials has helped to democratize political discourse and increase transparency and accountability. We also took steps to protect that discourse because we believe political reach should be earned not bought. In 2019, we banned all state-backed media advertising and political advertising from Twitter. Today we're expanding the types of political accounts we label.

We will add new labels to the following categories of Twitter accounts:

• Accounts of key government officials, including foreign ministers, institutional entities, ambassadors, official spokespeople, and key diplomatic leaders. At this time, our focus is on senior officials and entities who are the official voice of the state abroad

• Accounts belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their senior staff

Russia was not happy about the move.

Tweeted Russia's deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, "They think they can set the rules of the game! This is an illusion. Such clear double standards backfire and undermine credibility of Western media, with 'state-affiliate' labels or without. People can't find truth and facts there anymore."

From Reuters:

The accounts of Russia's Sputnik, RT, and China's Xinhua News are among the media organizations that will be labeled, according to a Twitter spokesman. He declined to provide a full list of entities.

"We believe that people have the right to know when a media account is affiliated directly or indirectly with a state actor," Twitter said in its blog. It will also stop amplifying these accounts or their tweets through its recommendation systems.

The social media company defined state-affiliated media as those where the state exercises editorial control through financial resources or political pressure, or control over production and distribution.