Twitter Adds New Labels For Government Officials, State-Controlled Media Senior Staff

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th August, 2020) The microblogging site Twitter has announced that it will introduce new labels to designate accounts that are run by government officials or are representing state-controlled media outlets and their senior staff, according to a post on the company's blog on Thursday.

The labels will initially be added to officials representing the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - Russia, China, France, the UK, and the US, the company said.

"We will add new labels to the following categories of Twitter accounts: Accounts of key government officials, including foreign ministers, institutional entities, ambassadors, official spokespeople, and key diplomatic leaders," Twitter said.

The labels will also be applied to state-affiliated media outlets, including their editors-in-chief and other members of senior staff, the microblogging service said.

A Twitter representative later confirmed to the CNN broadcaster that the labels will only be applied to official accounts, giving the example that US President Donald Trump's personal account, @realDonaldTrump, would not be labeled.

The US president and Twitter have clashed publicly over recent months following the death of George Floyd in May. The microblogging service added a fact-checking label to several of Trump's tweets and hid another for breaking the site's terms of service for glorifying violence.