Swedish Radio (SR) has pledged to stop using Twitter with immediate effect and close down a number of accounts after being labeled on the platform as "publicly funded media".
Despite the fact that SR's decision came almost immediately after it - along with fellow national broadcaster SVT - was so designated, SR claimed that its move had nothing to do with the new identity.
SR's social media manager Christian Gillinger suggested that Twitter has "simply changed over the years" and become "less important" to the broadcaster. He also reports indicating that only 7 percent of Swedes are on Twitter daily.
"The audience has simply chosen other places to be. And therefore Swedish Radio is now choosing to deactivate or delete the last remaining accounts," he said in a statement, explaining that the main accounts will simply be frozen and would be reactivated should the need arise.
Gillinger added that the broadcaster had no complaint about the label it was given describing it as a "correct description of how Swedish Radio is financed."
He also voiced concerns over the development of Twitter since it has been taken over by Elon Musk. According to Gillinger, the broadcaster was particularly disturbed by the drastic personnel cuts on Twitter, which "may affect the company's capacity to deal with, say, fake accounts, bots and misinformation, but also hate and threats". The broadcaster went so far as to call it "one of the factors that weighed on the decision to become editorially inactive on the platform".
The decision does not affect individual employees of SR. Unlike the recent TikTok ban by Norwegian broadcaster NRK, they will be allowed to choose for themselves whether they want to remain on Twitter.
Earlier, labeling controversies affected other major broadcasters. Among others, US National Public Radio (NPR) chose to leave the platform after being assigned the label "government-funded media," whereas British BBC vocally opposed the same marking, prompting Twitter to change it to "publicly-funded," as the British public service company is formally financed through license fees and not taxes.
According to Twitter's new policy, labels on government accounts heavily engaged in geopolitics and diplomacy provide additional context. The company distinguishes between "state-affiliated media accounts" (defined as outlets where the state exercises control editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressure, and/or control over production and distribution), "government-funded media accounts" (outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet's funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content), and "publicly funded media accounts" (organizations that receive funding from license fees, individual contributions, public financing, and commercial financing).