Twitter Revamps Verification System and Removes Government Labels

In a move that has sparked debate and frustration, Twitter has removed labels describing global media organizations as government-funded or state-affiliated. This comes after Elon Musk, Twitter's owner, started stripping blue verification checkmarks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee.

NPR in the U.S. was among the organizations no longer labeled, having announced last week its decision to stop using Twitter. NPR was initially designated as state-affiliated media, a term used to identify media outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments like Russia and China. The label was later changed to "government-funded media," but NPR, which receives only a small fraction of its funding from the government, found the label misleading.

Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and Swedish public radio also decided to quit tweeting, and their government-funded labels vanished on Friday. State-affiliated tags on media accounts such as Russia's Sputnik and RT, and China's Xinhua, were removed as well.