Okay, by the same label, I mean "state affiliated"

I think the "state affiliated media" could be applied to Twitter by the same standards, but for Tesla & SpaceX, just "state affiliated"

The problem is that Elon Musk's Twitter is being extremely selective in its labeling.

If you can think of a reason for this strange selective, seemingly targeting only certain English language sources, I'd love to hear it. Other than the "obvious" look that it seems that he's reacting petty against certain English language sources that have been critical of him, of course, because this would be my conclusion.

Example:

France24 (media state-owned by France): https://twitter.com/France24_en -- no label

Al Jazeera (media essentially owned by Qatar): https://twitter.com/AJEnglish -- no label

All India Radio News (India state owned media): https://twitter.com/airnewsalerts -- no label

NHK (Japan, funding model is very similar to the BBC licensing fee approach): https://twitter.com/NHKWORLD_News -- no label, unlike the BBC

ABC (Australia government-funded): https://twitter.com/ABCaustralia - no label, and no language barrier excuse here

i believe they are in the process of including more labels to State-affiliated and State-funded media

Yeah, but it does seem like they're doing so only in order to justify their decision on NPR. They gave NPR the label in response to a critical article from NPR, even while NPR was explicitly listed as an organisation this label didn't apply to. Since then, they've been scrambling to change rules and texts to justify a decision that was clearly made out of revenge.

looks to me like they're expanding from the ones they know first

it's strange to me that State-affiliation is seen as a pejorative, perhaps it's an American perspective - in Europe it's somewhere between a badge of honour or incidental information about the media that needs to be considered for context

It's a pejorative according to Twitter. According to their own definition, it applies to state-controlled media that don't have independent editorial control, and tweets with this label are not boosted the way other tweets can be.

editorial control being subject to private or to public interests is not a big difference

Twitter only applies this label because it's valuable context

I'd say editorial control subject to private interests may be worse than actual public interests. And frankly that seems to be true of all US corporate media; most US media is very pro-corporate and it's hard to find news that tells the other side of the story. On top of that, Fox News is specifically about the political interests of its owner. But none of them get labeled for it by Twitter.

But I don't see editorial control by a government for propaganda purposes as public interest; that's just the private interests of the people controlling the government. News in the public interest would be about informing the public as honestly as possible, showing the nuance, the different sides of the story, but also asking tough questions about it and getting to the bottom of the issue. Getting the truth out. Unfortunately that's not profitable enough in a capitalist media landscape.

whatever Twitter does to show the underlying institutional-level interests an account may be representing, it's very useful context IMO

npr sees it as a problem because Twitter has previously used those labels and context blurbs to weaponise their platform against accounts and messages coming from their ideological adversaries

conversely, they've given and taken blue ticks as a seal of approval and not to certify identities as the tick nominally was meant to do, going as far as removing the tick to people who stepped out of their line politically (and showering blue ticks to everyone even mildly related to the right-thinking media-government bubble)

essentially these blurbs and labels have been used almost always negatively, but right now they're out systematically pointing out the "category" of all institutional accounts, adding a bunch seemingly every day

what they are doing now it's at least superficially the correct thing to do

they now let users introduce context blurbs instead of centrally policing right-think, and they are adding ticks to government actors, and media that is either controlled, funded or affiliated to governments - in fact they should also add any funding by large foundations whether they are public or private

as a (sporadic) user this is in my interests, and it also works for them not to have to do so much speech policing in-house

> Twitter has previously used those labels and context blurbs to weaponise their platform against accounts and messages coming from their ideological adversaries

"Previously"? It's what Twitter is doing right now. That is the thing people are complaining about. It used to be used specifically to point out state propaganda channels, but Musk changed it to using for media he doesn't like. Like NPR.

> going as far as removing the tick to people who stepped out of their line politically

By making fun of Musk.

Look, you can try to spin this as if Musk is making Twitter somehow more objective and neutral, but nobody is falling for that because that's clearly not what's going on. Musk is running Twitter as his personal propaganda platform, boosting himself and accounts he approves of, and hiding those he disapproves of. It's about his personal preference now.

> now they're out systematically pointing out the "category" of all institutional accounts

"State-affiliated media" is exactly what NPR is not. Their own explanation of that category explicitly listed NPR as an example of NOT state-affiliated media. And it clearly doesn't fit their definition of it, but Musk put it in there anyway, because he wanted to punish them for criticising him. I think they have by now created a new less-wrong category for it: "government funded", but the fact of the matter is that NPR is primarily funded by donations.

Is he also pointing out "corporate funded media", by the way? Because that would also be a really useful category to point out.

the account is media, and it's as state affiliated as NPR, if not moreso

as for whether it's a media company, that's irrelevant and seems to be an attempt to move the goalposts

It's not irrelevant. I think it's a useful distinction.

All companies have PR departments (except, of course, Twitter, which only responds with poop emoji.)

Company PR departments generally report on the company and things which directly affect the company. They issue press releases and they comment on litigation and they celebrate anniversaries.

Journalism organizations and public information outlets don't merely report on themselves, they report on the world, or topics of interest to their advertisers or donors or governments or supporters. Therefore there's a wider range and there's a third-party nature to it. Journalists may be investigative, or sometimes they may just regurgitate press releases from various companies. From wide ranges of different types of various companies. Even if a news outlet reports only on dentistry, there's still a wide range of dental topics that are covered, not just Colgate and their toothpaste.

So I agree; NPR should be properly labeled according to the government which supports them. So should PBS, right? There's no shame in that. Why don't Facebook and Google do it too? YouTube regularly slaps a label on government mouthpieces that I tune into there. It's important to be even-handed and label the Chinese and Russians the same as the Venezuelans and Germans and Irish and Catholics and Orthodox the same as the United States.

I actually don't think it's a useful distinction, since the topic is media, not media companies. SpaceX's and Tesla's social media accounts are media, and they're both as state-affiliated, if not moreso, than NPR

folks reading posts by Tesla and SpaceX should know that aside from elmu's history of disingenuousness and outright lying, such posts are even more likely to be pro-government biased than NPR

so I agree: SpaceX and Tesla should be labeled according to the government which supports them, there's no shame in that.