PBS Joins NPR in Quitting Twitter over State-Backed Label | Hacker News Reader

PBS Joins NPR in Quitting Twitter over State-Backed Label

bloomberg.com

4 pointssatoshiiii7 comments

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...

> Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR.

NPR claims federal funding is essential, yet protests the label?

I think its a fair protest when other organizations aren't getting the same treatment under Twitter's own rules.

I'm not sure what the actual rule text was before Musk, but the category was essentially "outlets tied to authoritarian regimes," and at least it was consistently enforced.

I would prefer Twitter error on the side of more labels for increased context than fewer, just because others haven't gotten it yet does not mean they won't.

I agree it's fair for them to protest, just seems a bit hypocritical to post the GP quote on your website and then complain when you get labelled for alignment. Quitting just seems a childish response on NPR's part. How many people and orgs do they label and make claims about?

Then Twitter should change the rule and label everyone when, and only when, the Twitter staff have the label changes ready and queued up instead of throwing the rule out the door, labeling a handful of news organizations, and uniformly enforcing it when they get around to it. Uneven, impulsive enforcement with vague future promises is exactly what Musk (and many current/banned Twitter users) complained about before Musk bought Twitter.

And again I think its a fair complaint, not childish. NPR gets a small fraction of their funding from various governments, yet substantially or fully funded information outlets are still everywhere unlabeled on Twitter... which leave them sitting alongside the existing labeled outlets from authoritarian regimes. If I was NPR, I would feel singled out. I would be pissed too.

There are literally thousands of independent journalists who have been slapped with the label who do not even get a “small fraction” of their funding from an “authoritarian regime.” They just questioned the dominant narrative.

It'd be pretty funny if they added a "Elon Musk is the owner of Twitter and his Tweets are treated favorably in some algorithmic contexts" label.

I'm not sure it's "childish" for an organization to stop doing something that it perceives as not useful to the organization.

Congress gives the corporation for public broadcasting about $300 million a year. National public radio gets about 45% of their funding through appropriations, the rest comes from donations.

The real issue is that they don't pay anything for the spectrum use.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com