Twitter to add more labels to identify IDS of govt leaders

Twitter has said it will add labels to identify more government leaders and associated institutions from the next week to provide people with context to what they see and have a “more informed experience” on the microblogging platform.

Twitter said the roll-out 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. India, however, was not part of the list.

In August last year, Twitter had expanded account labels to two additional categories — the accounts of key government officials and those belonging to state-affiliated media entities. This also included accounts from countries represented in the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US).

“After receiving feedback on this initial action from a range of stakeholders — including civil society, academia, and those who use our service — on Wednesday, February 17, we will expand these labels to accounts from Group of Seven (G7) countries, and to a majority of countries that Twitter has attributed statelinked information operations to,” Twitter said on Thursday.

These labels will also be applied to the personal accounts of heads of state for these nations. “The immediate next phase will be to apply these labels to stateaffiliated 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.

Twitter has been facing flak over the past few weeks for accounts and posts with provocative content and misinformation around farmers’ protest.