According to a representative who testified before an Australian inquiry into foreign involvement, social media company Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, wants to identify government-affiliated accounts on its new Twitter-like platform, Threads.
In Tuesday’s Senate inquiry, Josh Machin, Meta’s head of public policy for Australia, expressed Meta’s commitment to promptly develop features such as labels for state-affiliated media and fact-checking. These initiatives are highly valued by Meta, and they aspire to expand them rapidly.
He stated, “Areas such as labels for state-affiliated media and fact-checking are all areas where we see a lot of value, and it’s our aspiration to build that out expeditiously.”
The information was revealed less than a week after Meta debuted Threads, a platform widely regarded as being comparable to Twitter.
Since business magnate Elon Musk turned Twitter private in 2022, tags from government-affiliated accounts have been erased, prompting protests about the lowering of users’ media literacy.
When asked if RT, a Russian state-affiliated broadcaster, or Xinhua News Agency, a Chinese government-affiliated publisher, would be appropriately labeled on Threads, Machin responded, “That’s our aspiration.”
He told the inquiry, “To the effect that any state-affiliated media are violating our policies, we would remove them. To the effect that any state-affiliated media are violating our policies, we would remove them.”
The RT and Xinhua account on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms already bear tags indicating that they are state-controlled media from Russia and China, respectively. When Reuters reviewed RT’s Threads account on Tuesday, it did not have such a designation, and Xinhua did not appear to have a Threads account.
The removal of Twitter’s foreign government connection tags was “extremely concerning from a transparency perspective,” Australian Senator James Paterson said when he questioned Meta about its labeling plans for Threads.
Twitter declined to comment when contacted by the Reuters news agency. Executives from Twitter are expected to take part in the inquiry on Tuesday, though.
