Twitter labels government officials, state-backed media

Twitter Inc. has begun labeling some state-backed media accounts, as well as accounts belonging to “key government officials” for certain countries, to create more transparency when governments and their leaders use the social-media platform to discuss important geopolitical issues, the company said Thursday.

The new policy will start with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, — the U.S., U.K., Russia, China and France — whose Twitter feeds will be labeled as “government accounts.” State-backed media organizations and their top editors will also get “state-affiliated media” labels. The labels will appear on both account profiles and individual tweets. On Friday, the new tag had been appended to accounts belonging to the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily and Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of its affiliated Global Times.