Matt Novak
Contributor
FOIA reporter and founder of Paleofuture.com, writing news and opinion on every aspect of technology.
Apr 8, 2023
The NPR Twitter account as it currently appears, annotated to highly the new label of ... [+]TWITTER
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has changed the way National Public Radio is listed on the social media platform yet again, slapping a “government funded” label on the organization’s Twitter account. And it sounds like other media outlets will probably get the new label soon.
Twitter caused some controversy this past week when the social media platform added a label to NPR’s account declaring it was “state-affiliated media.” The move put NPR, which receives some funding from the government, on par with Russia’s RT and China’s Xinhua propaganda outlets. But Twitter has changed NPR’s label to read “government funded” on Saturday, leaving the “state affiliated” label on Xinhua and RT. At least for now.
NPR gets roughly 1-2% of its funding from the federal government, while the majority of its funding comes from corporate sponsorships and fees charged to local radio stations, according to the New York Times. And while NPR does get some government funding, it has editorial independence much like other state-funded broadcasters around the world.
Australia’s ABC News and the UK’s BBC are just two examples of state-funded broadcasters that doesn’t necessarily agree with the sitting Prime Ministers of their respective countries on everything at any given time. The BBC and Australia’s ABC don’t have any label on Twitter, but that might change according to the latest reports.
NPR’s Bobby Allyn, a technology reporter for the media outlet, tweeted on Saturday that Elon Musk told him Twitter would be applying the “government funded” label to “a larger number of institutions.”
Allyn was quick to point out that Tesla has also benefited from government funding, but that isn’t disclosed on Musk’s social media network.
“Tesla, which has received billions of dollars in government subsidies over the years, does not appear to have the label,” Allyn tweeted on Saturday.
While Tesla has indeed historically benefited from government funding, Musk’s other company SpaceX is arguably much more dependent on government money. SpaceX is privately held, so it’s tough to know for sure, but some back-of-the-napkin estimates have estimated about 98% of SpaceX funding comes from government contracts.
It’s not immediately clear when the “government funded” label will start popping up on other Twitter accounts. Twitter responded to a request for comment on Saturday afternoon with a poop emoji, an automated email that was set up by Musk to respond to all reporters.
The poop emoji response all reporters now receive when they try to email Twitter for comment.GMAIL
Musk has ruffled plenty of feathers in recent weeks, not just with his controversial new labeling strategy for NPR. Musk started putting a warning on all Twitter links going out to Substack, the writing platform that’s become incredibly popular. That choice cause Matt Taibbi, a journalist who worked on the so-called Twitter Files, to say he was leaving Twitter on Friday since it meant he couldn’t effectively share his work.
“It turns out Twitter is upset about the new Substack Notes feature, which they see as a hostile rival. When I asked how I was supposed to market my work, I was given the option of posting my articles on Twitter instead of Substack,” Taibbi wrote.
But Musk disagreed with Taibbi’s characterization, insisting Twitter wasn’t blocking links to Substack. And while it’s technically true that you could still get to the link, most normal people wouldn’t click on it simply because Twitter made it look like something that would harm your computer.
On top of all that, Twitter has stopped anyone from retweeting or even liking tweets with Substack posts, a bizarre move considering Substack Notes is still a beta project that most people can’t even access yet. Musk also appears to be picking fights with friendly investors who support Substack, including venture capitalist Paul Graham.
“Elon has asked me to ‘please tell people on Twitter that you are an investor in the company trying to kill Twitter,’ so for anyone who didn't already know, Substack is a YC company,” Graham tweeted on Saturday.
“It's not because I'm an investor that I think it's a mistake to penalize links to Substack though. It's just the wrong way to run a forum. You can't put your interests before users' like that. I would tell Substack the same thing,” Graham continued.
Musk is clearly free to do whatever he wants on Twitter. The billionaire bought the social media site for $44 billion back in October 2022 and he’s free to slap labels on whichever accounts he likes while blocking links to anything on a whim. But it’s hard to see how he’s going to make his users very happy by severely hampering usability of the site in increasingly bizarre ways.
Matt Novak
I’m a technology reporter and founder of Paleofuture.com, a website I started in 2007 that looks at past visions of the future, from flying cars and jetpacks to utopias and dystopias. Paleofuture was formerly hosted at Smithsonian magazine (2011-2013) and Gizmodo (2013-2020).
No comments:
Post a Comment