Microblogging platform Twitter has announced that it will be adding a new set of labels to identify the accounts of more government leaders, associated institutions, media outlets and other government personnel. The process will begin next week.
The move aims to identify credible sources of information in each nation.
This latest rollout will begin in Canada, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates from February 17, Twitter said in a blogpost on Thursday.
This means that Twitter will introduce the changes in almost all G7 nations. However, the company has not included India in it.
At the moment, the microblogging platform has not cleared the selection criteria of the nations behind the rollout.
It added that these labels will also be applied to the personal accounts of heads of state for these countries.
“The immediate next phase will be to apply these labels to state-affiliated media entities of these phase two countries. Beyond this, we will continue expanding labels to additional countries over time and look forward to providing additional updates as those plans take shape,” it said.
In its latest blog post, Twitter said labels will be added to verified accounts of key government officials, including foreign ministers, institutional entities, ambassadors, official spokespeople, and key diplomatic leaders. The focus being senior officials and entities “who are the official voice of the state abroad”, it added.
“We’re also updating the label text to add more specificity to the government account labels by differentiating between individuals and institutions, and expanding labels to the personal accounts of heads of state to give people on Twitter additional context,” it added.
Twitter said as the next phase of this project, it will work to apply additional labels on state-affiliated media accounts over the next several months.
Twitter has been facing flak over the past few weeks for accounts and posts with provocative content and misinformation around farmers’ protest. The government had issued a stern warning to the microblogging platform to comply with local laws or be prepared for action.
According to sources, Twitter has blocked over 97 per cent of the accounts and posts flagged by the IT ministry.