Twitter stops labeling Russia’s RT and China’s Xinhua as “state-affiliated media”
Enlarge / RT's Twitter profile, no longer labeled as "Russia state-affiliated media."
Twitter has removed "government-funded" and "state-affiliated" labels from media accounts, including those of public broadcasters in the US and the accounts of state-controlled news organizations in China and Russia. The RT and Xinhua Twitter accounts were previously labeled "Russia state-affiliated media" and "China state-affiliated media," but those labels disappeared sometime yesterday or today.
RT describes itself on its Twitter profile as promoting "freedom over censorship, truth over narrative," and the profile now has no indication that it's controlled by the Russian government. China's Xinhua state news agency, also now unlabeled by Twitter, calls itself "public media for the public good" that doesn't "yield to the pressure of ideological stigmatization and political bias."
Other state-affiliated media outlets had their labels removed by Twitter. "State-backed Dot Dot News posted a screenshot of its Twitter account on Friday with a caption that said: 'the label is gone! China state-affiliated media is gone,'" the Hong Kong Free Press wrote. Dot Dot News is located in Hong Kong but is described as being pro-Beijing. Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK lost its state-affiliated media tag as well.