Moscow, Aug. 7, (dpa/GNA) – The US-based microblogging platform Twitter has labelled Russian and Chinese state media accounts in an effort to alert readers about their provenance, the company said in a statement.
“Twitter will not recommend or amplify accounts or their Tweets with these labels to people,” the statement said.
The label, “Russia state-affiliated media” or a Russian-language equivalent, has been placed at the top of Twitter pages for Russian state-funded news outlets RT, Sputnik, TASS and RIA Novosti, as well as the personal page of RT chief editor Margarita Simonyan.
A similar label was also used for Chinese news outlets Xinhua and the People’s Daily.
Twitter said it was initially displaying such labels for state institutions and their representatives from the five countries that are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: China, Russia, France, Britain and the United States.
However, the label was not present on Tuesday on pages for France’s AFP, Britain’s BBC and the United States’ PBS state-funded news outlets.
GNA