Ever since billionaire Elon Musk took charge of Twitter, he has barely been out of headlines. He has been making constant changes to the microblogging site- introduction of Twitter Blue, an $8 paid subscription for users, introduction of gold and silver ticks, reinstating controversial accounts, and many more. Along with the changes on the platform, "Chief Twit" has made some changes to his bio as well. He changed his bio to "state-affiliated" media after mentioning that the social media platform should have that label.
It started on January 16, when a user, Wall Street Silver, tweeted that certain media accounts should be tagged with labels while citing the example of CGTN, which has been labelled "China state-affiliated media" on Twitter. He said, "Should certain media accounts also be tagged with similar labels? Based on the Twitter Files, we now know govt agencies control or influence legacy media and social media. "USA state-affiliated media" @nytimes @MSNBC @facebook @washingtonpost plus many others."
Responding to the same, the billionaire said, "Technically, Twitter should have that label."
Within five minutes, Mr Musk tweeted, "Kudos to the BBC for self-labelling its state affiliation." Following this trend, the billionaire then changed his bio to "state-affiliated media" on Monday.
Later explaining his stance on BBC, Mr Musk, in response to a tweet mentioned, "But that's actually the point I was making: state influence/affiliation with media is far more common than most people realize - just look at how much Twitter/FB/Google have been influenced!"
This comes after American author Matt Taibbi released a new set of "Twitter Files" on January 13. In a long thread, he emphasised how certain political figures in the US tried to control what was posted on the platform before the billionaire purchased the microblogging site for $44 billion.
