The accounts of several Russian, Chinese and Iranian state media outlets saw a 70 percent increase in engagement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after it removed labels identifying them as “state-affiliated,” according to a new report released Tuesday.
The recent analysis from NewsGuard, which analyzes media trends and disinformation, found that 12 state media accounts from the three countries saw the number of likes and reposts on their content jump from 2.93 million in the 90 days before X removed the “state-affiliated” labels to 4.98 million in the 90-day period afterward.
Russia’s RT, which was already receiving substantially more engagement than the other state media outlets before the label’s removal, saw interactions with its posts nearly double in the three months after the change, jumping from 1.3 million to 2.5 million.
Iran’s PressTV similarly saw its engagement increase by about 97 percent, rising from 215,000 to 425,000 interactions after X’s removal of the “state-affiliated” label, according to NewsGuard.
Russia’s TASS also saw a 63 percent increase in engagement, receiving 493,000 interactions in the three months after the change, while engagement with posts from China’s Global Times rose by 26 percent to 314,000 interactions.
Couldn’t label NPR as state sponsored so removed the label entirely?
Other way around. Musk’s backers wanted the state media label gone, so he applied it to legit sources so it would be destroyed by the outcry.
Musk wasn’t wrong in applying the state media tag to NPR/BBC/CBC. At the end of the day, they are funded by the state.
There’s a difference between state-funded and partisan state media. And technically all major newspapers in Canada get some funding from the government, for example.
The propoganda must flow.
Truth clouds observation
So State labelled media was basically just keep wrong narratives under wraps, keep people away from them and shaft them down the algorithm where nobody would see it unless they went especially looking for it. It never had anything to do with “state media” since no western state media got the label, never had anything to do with lies, disinformation or propaganda either, since what is wider media these days anyway. It had everything to do with not following the Euro-Atlantic narrative and god forbid letting the designated “enemy countries” voice their side of the story. Why there is so much Twitter/X hate rn. in the media is because the western global ministry of truth fears losing grasp of the narrative if too much freedom is introduced.
I want to hear no bullshit here about how this was actually ever good and necessary and why we need narrative control for “democracy” and for protection of the fragile minds of the plebs who don’t know any better than to believe Russian and Chinese lies.
Well. That’s certainly a take.
deleted by creator
Uh…what
the Euro-Atlantic narrative
the western global ministry of truth
I've never lol'd harder in my life. Please tell me that their halls look at least half as cool as the Ministry of Magic in Westminster
Which western state media met xitter’s definition of state-affiliated?
NPR. I shit you not.
You know NPR was literally included in xitter’s definition of “state-funded with editorial independence” until Musk shat himself right ?
NPR does receive U.S. government funding through grants from federal agencies and departments, along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The company said it accounts for less than 1% of NPR’s annual operating budget. But until Wednesday, the same Twitter guidelines said that “state-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the United States, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.”
https://apnews.com/article/twitter-npr-state-affiliated-media-label-dea3e04905e423f7a8df9ba077d421f3
I heard about it. I am a fan of Marketplace. It’s just insane that he tried to silence it after all that free speech bullshit he sprouted, while he removed the notice on media literally owned by authoritarian states. He’s a wingnut. Up is down, good is bad, etc…
I’m so confused by this
Think of it this way: freedom is a threat to his business model.
