Twitter dropped warning labels on the state-run propaganda outlets for some of the U.S.’s most potent and lethal geopolitical adversaries on Thursday evening.
The latest changes on the Elon Musk social media platform coincided with Twitter dropping the legacy blue check marks for all accounts, including key government agencies and even the Pope.
The highly controversial decision led to renowned tech reporter Kara Swisher sharing an exchange between the actual account for the city of New York calling out a fake account, which had announced on the platform it was in fact the real account to follow. Swisher commented on the stunning exchange, writing, “The Elon clusterfuck is ON.”
Journalist Robert Mackey also tore into Musk for the changes, calling out the billionaire for no longer differentiating weaponized media outlets from legitimate news sources.
“Mission accomplished. While everyone was distracted by his blue-check removals, Musks’s Twitter deleted labels that alerted users that they were reading news from state-run propaganda outlets of authoritarian governments. Potemkin news channels now free to inject disinformation,” Mackey wrote sharing images of Russia’s RT and Tass, Iran’s PressTV, and China’s CCTV account appearing as would any other media outlet.
Russia, China, and Iran have long worked to use social media and disinformation online to sow anger and discord in U.S. society as a weapon to undermine U.S. democracy and global influence.
Mackey also shared an old quote from Musk, in which he jested about Russian state propaganda being “entertaining”:
Musk making it easier for state propaganda channels to tweet disinformation tracks with his resistance to blocking Russia Today when Russia invaded Ukraine. “Actually I find their news quite entertaining,” Musk texted a friend then. “Lots of bullshit, but some good points too.”
Musk’s Twitter also dropped the controversial labels he slapped on the BBC and NPR, which led to the latter leaving Twitter altogether. Musk had initially slapped a “state-affiliated” label on NPR and after a fierce backlash and being widely panned for the inaccurate label he conceded it “might not be accurate” and it was eventually changed to “government funded.”
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