Swedish radio said its decision was made because Twitter was no longer relevant to Swedish listeners, and did not blame Twitter's new policy of labeling many public broadcasters as government- funded.
Photo: Reuters
American television networks NPR and PBS, and Canada's CBC, also left Twitter last week after the social media company added new labels to their accounts, identifying them as "government-funded media."
The BBC in the UK is currently being labeled by Twitter as a "publicly funded media outlet." Major Western broadcasters argue that there is a clear distinction between publicly funded but editorially independent broadcasters and those run by the government.
Swedish radio has been on Twitter since 2009. They had 7.4 million weekly listeners in 2021. They said Swedish interest in Twitter has been declining, citing a report that only 7% of Swedes use Twitter daily, compared to 53% of Facebook users and 48% of Instagram users.
Christian Gillinger, head of social media at Swedish radio, said most accounts would be deleted and others would be labeled as inactive. Individuals working at the station are still free to use Twitter if they wish.
However, Gillinger said the worrying aspect was that Twitter had reduced its workforce, and that this could negatively impact its ability to handle bots, misinformation, and hate speech on the platform. "Of course, these are factors that need to be considered when we decide not to operate on the platform," he said.
Quoc Thien (according to AP)
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