European Politicians Say Twitter Should Label All State-Affiliated Media Outlets

European politicians have criticized Twitter's decision to selectively mark media outlets from Russia as state-affiliated when the same labels have not been affixed to news agencies and broadcasters from other countries, such as the United Kingdom's BBC

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th August, 2020) European politicians have criticized Twitter's decision to selectively mark media outlets from Russia as state-affiliated when the same labels have not been affixed to news agencies and broadcasters from other countries, such as the United Kingdom's BBC.

The microblogging platform announced on Thursday that it would begin attaching labels to the official accounts of leading politicians, government bodies, and state-funded media outlets and their senior staff from the five permanent member nations of the United Nations Security Council - Russia, China, France, the UK, and the US.

Labels have been applied to political accounts from the five aforementioned countries, although Twitter has been accused of being inconsistent in its application of the tags to state-affiliated media outlets. The tags also remove these news outlets from users' recommendation lists.

As of Thursday, the Twitter accounts of the RT broadcaster and those linked to the Rossiya Segodnya media conglomerate, which includes Sputnik, have been labeled as "Russia state-affiliated media." However, the same labels have not been attached to the BBC broadcaster or the Voice of America agency, which are both state-funded.

Writing on Thursday, the press department of the Rossiya Segodnya agency said that it was waiting for the labels to be applied to the state-funded media outlets of other countries in order to avoid accusations of "double standards."

The Russian Foreign Ministry has called the failure to label Western media sources that receive government funding discriminatory, adding that the move has "violated democratic principles."

Writing in a blog post, Twitter said that the labels would be rolled out to cover more countries in the near future, although questions have been raised over the microblogging platform's objectivity and ability to apply the new policy fairly.

EUROPEAN POLITICIANS HIGHLIGHT TWITTER'S BIAS

Twitter's new policy has yet to be applied to German media outlets, given the European country's status as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Discussing how the new policy will be rolled out in Germany, Joana Cotar, the spokeswoman for the Alternative for Germany party in the Bundestag Committee on the Digital Agenda, said that the social media platform must clarify the criteria it uses to decide whether to label media outlets that are affiliated with the governments of their respective countries.

"But if Twitter does that, there must be proof that the media outlets are indeed state-controlled and Twitter has to do it for all countries and all affected media outlets. And what about media outlets that are not 'officially state-controlled' but act as they were? I'm thinking about Germany, ARD/ZDF," Cotar told Sputnik.

The lawmaker added that Twitter's current policy underlines the microblogging platform's bias against non-Western media outlets, adding that the measure could be interpreted as discriminatory.

"I think that is highly unfair and shows bias. As I said - if Twitter does that, it has to do it for all countries. Otherwise one could think they do it on purpose to discredit Russian media," Cotar remarked.

These sentiments were shared by Steven Woolfe, a former member of the European Parliament and UK Independence Party, who told Sputnik that the microblogging platform must understand its ability to control political dialogue.

"Twitter has become a powerful controller of speech in the world and its decision to label institutions like RT but not the BBC is biased on their side because they do not want the views of what they regard a non-liberal organization having their message out.

They are being unfair and they are being discriminatory," Woolfe said.

Freddy Vachha, the current head of the UK Independence Party, also called on Twitter to apply labels to the state-affiliated media outlets of all five UN Security Council permanent members.

"As social media is by definition international, comparable treatment must be meted out to all. So either identify no one as government-source or identify all of those who are, starting as agreed with Security Council member states," Vachha told Sputnik.

The UK politician added that he was in support of the measure being rolled out on social media, given that many users fail to conduct their own research to assess the quality of the sources they read.

"Those who control social media control the information flow to many people, especially the young and impressionable who may not do further research," the UKIP leader said.

Vachha also criticized the BBC, which is funded by the UK taxpayer, accusing the public broadcaster of spreading propaganda in the past and of bias in its coverage of the Brexit process.

"In the UK, especially during 1997-2010, the BBC was a direct tool of government, displaying bias and propaganda. And for a much longer period, running from the 1980s to the present day, the BBC has consistently propagated very misleading information re: the European Union, leading to it being called the Brussels Broadcasting Corporation. Its coverage was and is lop-sided and the BBC does not report news that did not fit its agenda," the UKIP leader commented.

The microblogging platform has yet to give a timeline for when the state-affiliated media outlets of other countries, in addition to the five UN Security Council permanent members, will have their accounts labeled.

In justifying the policy, Twitter said that it hoped to make the experience of interaction with government officials and state-affiliated media accounts "more transparent," although the way the new measure has been rolled out has raised numerous concerns.

US President Donald Trump has clashed publicly with Twitter officials over recent months after several of the president's tweets were flagged with a fact-checking label. The microblogging platform in May also hid a tweet by the president for breaking the site's terms of service following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

At that time, Trump signed an executive order that could open the door for Federal regulators to fine online platforms for censoring online content. The president has also sought to alter or repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides online platforms protection from civil liabilities for removing harmful or illegal content.

Twitter's latest dispute raises multiple questions over the position of social media platforms to police online content. On Tuesday, the popular mobile messaging application WhatsApp announced the launch of a new fact-check feature that can be used to assess the reliability of widely shared information.

One day later, TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese firm ByteDance, announced a new set of measures for its US operations that aim to tackle the spread of disinformation ahead of November's US presidential election.

As more and more people worldwide access news content exclusively on online platforms, the ability for social media applications to control what users see and consume is coming under greater scrutiny.

In this instance, Twitter's subjective approach that has targeted Russian accounts, but not those of the United Kingdom and the United States, has raised further questions that the microblogging platform will have to answer.