After a year, Twitter appears to have unblocked Russian government accounts. The Elon Musk-owned platform now shows Putin and Russian Embassy accounts in search results.
The Telegraph also noticed the Russian authorities’ timetables and recommendations. A former Twitter employee said a policy change may have caused this.
Twitter has revised its rules on government and state-affiliated accounts. The previous version contained a section called “Do these labels hinder functionality?” where the firm explained how it restricted some accounts in this category.
Twitter will not promote state-affiliated media companies or their Tweets. “In limited circumstances where there is a heightened risk for harm, including situations where governments block access to internet information in an armed conflict, Twitter will also not recommend or amplify certain government accounts or their Tweets with these labels to people,” the policy read.
The corporation eliminated that part. Over the weekend, Musk told a user that Twitter will “neither prompt nor limit their accounts” and “rapidly resolve any efforts at exploiting the system.” Several Russian Twitter accounts have manipulated narratives.
As Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Twitter banned official accounts from nations that censored content.
“When a state restricts or limits access to internet services, undermining the public’s voice and capacity to access information freely, yet continues to use online services for their communications, a major information imbalance is formed. “At periods of actual, armed interstate conflict, the damages produced by this imbalance are severe; access to information, and to the capacity to exchange information, are of crucial significance,” the business wrote in a blog post.
Following taking over Twitter, Musk has sought to reject the social network’s function as an arbitrator of truth, dismissed many moderation team members, and increased Community Notes, the company’s crowdsourced fact-checking tool, to perform the hard labor.
Over the weekend, Anonymous Operations criticized Twitter’s inaction on a Russian official’s message urging the “disappearance of Ukraine.” However, Musk said that all news is “some degree of propaganda” and that individuals should be free to decide for themselves, implying that Twitter won’t meddle in topics that may have broken the social network’s speech policy under the previous management.
Twitter made tough media judgments under Musk. Once Substack launched Notes, a Twitter clone, the mailing platform disabled responses, retweets, and likes to postings featuring Substack links last week. Twitter has dropped most of the limitations, although it still limits Substack link searches.
After criticism, Musk renamed NPR “Government Sponsored Media” from “US state affiliate media.” BBC, PBS, and VOA are considered “Government Sponsored Media.” However, the BBC objects to this term since it is sponsored by “the British public through the license fee.”
Since the New York Times declined to pay Twitter for verification, Musk deleted the checkmark last week. The corporation expected to remove historical verification marks on April 1 but hasn’t yet.
