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Perhaps in a bid to attract the still-reluctant advertisers, Elon Musk is now opting for a de-escalation of sorts in his Twitter vs. media campaign.

#UPDATE Twitter has dropped "state-affiliated"and "government-funded" labels from media accounts, according to a review by @AFP on Friday of many high-profile pages on the platform

Many major media outlets that had either of those tags no longer display them, according to AFP. pic.twitter.com/Yt2hk5qiBb

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) April 21, 2023

Just moments ago, AFP reported that Twitter has now dropped its contentious “state-affiliated media” and “government-funded” tags on the accounts of major media outlets, including NPR and BBC.

Source: https://twitter.com/NPR

The screenshot of NPR’s Twitter account confirms this development.

For the benefit of those who might have been unaware, NPR receives a number of competitive grants from the likes of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, etc. According to NPR’s own claims, it “receives funding for less than 1% of its budget directly from the federal government, but receives almost 10% of its budget from federal, state, and local governments indirectly.” If one were inclined to put weight on semantics, NPR does receive material state-backed funding. However, some people vehemently objected to Elon Musk’s “state-affiliated media” categorization for NPR’s Twitter account in light of the non-profit media outlet’s demonstrable editorial independence. Others pointed to the inherent hypocrisy given the fact that Tesla receives government incentives that are orders of magnitude higher than anything NPR receives.

As for BBC, the entity derives almost all of its revenue from a license fee that is imposed directly on British consumers. As such, the media icon does not receive any funds directly from the government.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk has been going after quite aggressively against Twitter’s competitors in recent days. Last week, the CEO of Tesla and Twitter announced sweeping changes to attract content creators, including the ability to broadcast in multiple forms such as lengthy videos or tweets styled as entire passages, the active promotion of content creators by Twitter itself, and a commitment to pass on the entirety of subscription-based revenue to such individuals for a period of one year. Apparently, these changes were introduced in response to Substack’s launch of a Twitter-like “Notes” service.

Moreover, after citing alleged attempts by Substack to download “a massive portion of the Twitter database” for the benefit of its Notes offering, Elon Musk downgraded Twitter’s relationship with Substack.

Additionally, on Wednesday, Elon Musk threatened to sue Microsoft after the tech giant announced that Twitter would not be eligible for Smart Campaigns with its Multi-platform starting on the 25th of April, 2023. The platform allows users the ability to manage various social media accounts dispersed on multiple platforms in one place. Musk alleged that Microsoft trained its Bing AI “illegally” by using Twitter’s data. Apparently, Microsoft’s decision was prompted by the hefty fees that Twitter is now demanding for its Application Programming Interfaces (API), which provides third parties access to a trove of internal data and features such as automatic tweets.

As per the tabulation by Sensor Tower, 37 of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers from before Musk’s takeover have spent zero dollars on advertising at Twitter in the first quarter of 2023. Another batch of 24 advertisers in this cohort has curtailed its ad spend on the platform by as much as 80 percent. Against this backdrop, today’s move to remove the “state-affiliated media” tag might be a gambit by Elon Musk to pacify and lure in recalcitrant advertisers.