Twitter will now label tweets from Russian affiliated state media more prominently. (Image credit: Twitter) Twitter has announced it will start adding labels to all tweets of Russian state-affiliated media websites and will take steps to reduce the circulation of such content on the platform. The announcement comes in the backdrop of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and worries over the spread of disinformation on social media platforms.
According to a post by Yoel Roth, Head of Site Integrity at Twitter, the company will roll out the labels—with a ‘Stay Informed’ message as well to warn users—in the coming weeks.
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Roth added in series of tweets, “As people look for credible information on Twitter regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we understand and take our role seriously. Our product should make it easy to understand who’s behind the content you see, and what their motivations and intentions are.”
Today, we’re adding labels to Tweets that share links to Russian state-affiliated media websites and are taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter.
We’ll roll out these labels to other state-affiliated media outlets in the coming weeks. pic.twitter.com/57Dycmn8lx
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) February 28, 2022
He also said that since the invasion, Twitter has seen more than 45,000 tweets a day sharing links to Russian state-affiliated media outlets. While Twitter has labeled accounts of global state media outlets for years, their tweets never had a label saying ‘Stay Informed’, which almost looks like a warning. Twitter added that they are doing this to give more visible context to tweets from these handles.
“We’ve learned that labeling Tweets is another way we can add helpful context to conversations around some of the most critical issues, such as COVID-19 and elections happening around the world. This work builds on the numerous steps we’ve taken over the past week — from pausing ads in Ukraine and Russia, to launching timeline prompts with context about the crisis,” Roth said.
The labels on state-affiliated accounts on the platform are meant to provide additional context about accounts that are controlled by certain official representatives of governments, state-affiliated media entities and individuals closely associated with those entities, according to Twitter’s blog post on the subject.
The label usually appears on the profile page of the relevant Twitter account. It also appears on tweets sent by and shared from these accounts. But as noted above till now it has not included the warning ‘Stay Informed’. The label was also not as prominent earlier. These labels also include a small icon of a flag to signal the account’s status as a government account.
So far labels have been applied to accounts from the following countries: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.
According to Twitter, labels appear on government accounts heavily engaged in geopolitics and diplomacy, state-affiliated media entities as well as individuals, such as editors or high-profile journalists, associated with state-affiliated media entities. This policy is expected to be expanded to include additional countries in the future.
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