Twitter Inc on Thursday announced that it will start labelling accounts of key government officials, institutions and state-backed media accounts.
“Election labels contain additional information about Twitter accounts for specified political candidates. The label appears on the profile page of the candidate’s Twitter account and on the Tweets sent and Retweeted by the candidate’s account. Labels contain information about the office the candidate is running for, the state the office is located in, and (when applicable) the district number,” reads the description on Twitter.
“Additionally, these labels include a small icon of a ballot box to signal the account’s status as a candidate running for government office,” read the post.
“When it comes to conversations with government and state-affiliated media accounts on Twitter, we’re helping to make the experience more transparent. We’ll now use two distinct profile labels for these types of accounts, so you can easily identify them and their Tweets,” said Twitter in a statement on its social media account.
“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 wrote in a blog post.
The labels won’t apply to all politicians’ accounts — only those involved in foreign affairs, such as foreign ministers and ambassadors.
This new policy will start with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the US, UK, Russia, China and France — whose Twitter feeds will be labelled as “government accounts.” State-backed media organisations and their top editors will also get “state-affiliated media” labels. These labels will appear on both account profiles and individual tweets.
