To help you determine which Twitter users work for foreign governments, the company on Thursday introduced a new labeling system that’ll make it easy to identify accounts with ties to a particular government or state-run media outlet.
Previously, state-sponsored media groups from China and Russia could tweet news—and suspected propaganda—without revealing their ties to a government. Now tweets from these outlets will get served with a label that says "state-affiliated media."
In addition, tweets from accounts belonging to foreign ambassadors, senior government officials, and top editors at state-owned media groups, are getting slapped with a label indicating their state-backed ties.
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“We believe this is an important step so that when people see an account discussing geopolitical issues from another country, they have context on its national affiliation and are better informed about who they represent,” Twitter explained in a blog post.
“We will also no longer amplify state-affiliated media accounts or their Tweets through our recommendation systems including on the home timeline, notifications, and search,” the company added.
The changes mark Twitter's ongoing effort to stop governments from manipulating conversations on the service. Last year, the company began banning state-backed media advertising and all political advertising to prevent the spread of misinformation.
The new labeling system won’t apply to well-known leaders such as President Trump because users already know those accounts belongs to a head of state. Instead, Twitter is focusing on senior officials and political entities that act as a voice for a nation-state abroad.
You can now see the labels on state-run media outlets such as Russia’s RT.com, China’s Global Times, and on spokespeople and foreign ministers for the Chinese government, including Lijian Zhao, a diplomat known for trolling Americans. The account for US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also been labeled.
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For now, Twitter is only applying the labels to officials from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. However, the company plans to expand the system to other countries in the future.
Twitter is making an exception for state-funded media outlets known to have editorial independence, such as NPR. These outlets won’t get labeled.
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