Does this mean that the BBC is prohibited from advertising on Twitter?
> This policy will not apply to taxpayer-funded entities, including independent public broadcasters.
So quite probably no, since the BBC is an independent public broadcaster (much like NPR in the US) - it is state funded but not directly controlled by the state; it maintains editorial independence.
Of course conclusively defining editorial independence seems like quite a non-trivial task. It's made even more confusing by the fact that it goes on to state:
> This policy will apply to news media entities that are either financially or editorially controlled by the state.
While the BBC and other taxpayer funded independent public broadcasters are not editorially controlled by the state, isn't being taxpayer funded synonymous with being controlled financially by the state?
Compare these two scenarios:
• I, an advertiser, give YouTube $20. YouTube decides to not give the content-creator on whose media my ads ran that $20. That's up to them, because YouTube controls the relationship. I, as an advertiser, don't even really have a relationship with content creators; I just have a relationship with YouTube, and they have a separate relationship with YouTube, and sometimes YouTube chooses to pay out the content creator with money that I just paid in. But that's a policy choice, not an obligation. As an advertiser, I don't care what happens to my money as long as my ads run and people see them. They can do whatever they like with the money—pay content creators, pay themselves, burn it, whatever.
• I, a buyer, give PayPal $20. PayPal is obligated to give (most of) that $20 to the person I am buying goods from; the $20 is a liability on their balance sheet. Why? Because I (and a number of other people) would get quite cross with PayPal if they didn't give the money to the person I intended it for. That transmission-of-money-to-intended-recipient is their business model; it's the reason I trusted them with my money in the first place.
A "taxpayer funded" media entity like the BBC is presumably more like a PayPal-style relationship than a YouTube-style relationship: the taxpayers are giving the government money under the assumption that it is obligated to give that money to the BBC; effectively, the BBC is the one the public feels they owe the money to, and the government is just serving a role as the BBC's tax-collector. If the funds were spent somewhere else, people would be very cross with the government.
I don't work in the BBC but it usually works like "you have editorial independence but if you don't say what we want you'll see what happens to your budget"
https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Sum...
I can't really make a convincing case right now, I'll admit, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it feels like a special exemption for (at least) one state-funded entity, for hand-wavy reasons. That seems like in practice it will translate into a policy of banning any PRC equivalent of the BBC, should it ever exist. (Is there currently something close?)
Edit: mjw1007 gives a sense in which the BBC may be more like Chinese state media in this context [1], while derefr gives a more concrete test for deciding which bucket to put the BBC in [2].