It's the end of an era and the beginning of another for users of Twitter as on Thursday into Friday the Elon Musk-owned platform has dropped its government-funded and state-affiliated media labels.

Entities associated with China and Russia, for years accustomed to having the govt-funded labels displayed prominently on their Twitter profiles, saw the label suddenly disappear at a moment the Elon Musk-owned platform also stripped legacy blue check verification marks from any account not paying the monthly fee of $8. 

Above: govt-funded labels and blue check marks disappeared at the same time.

US state-funded National Public Radio (NPR) also saw it's label dropped, interestingly just after announcing last week it planned to abandoned Twitter due to its main account being designated as state-affiliated. NPR claimed that it was misleading, despite it long being clear that it absolutely does receive federal funding. 

Hilariously, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) also groaned and griped after being slapped with a tongue-in-cheek "69% Government-funded Media" label...

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Twitter profile has a new label that Elon Musk wrote specifically for Canada's public broadcaster: "69% Government-funded Media." While Musk appears to be enjoying his feud with media outlets, his insistence on using "state-affiliated" and "government-funded" labels for public broadcasters has driven several news organizations to quit the social network that he bought for $44 billion.

"Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they're 'less than 70% government-funded,' so we corrected the label," Musk wrote in a tweet last night. The tweet included a screenshot of CBC's Twitter profile with the new "69% Government-funded Media" label.

For the first time since 2020, RT appears without the state-funded label:

RT and others have long pointed out that only certain entities received the label (which all happened to be based in "enemy/rival" countries of the United States). A 2020 report said: 

Twitter has declared war on certain state-affiliated media entities, announcing accounts belonging to senior staff will be labeled and their tweets won’t be amplified or recommended. The BBC and US state-funded media are exempt.

Also at the end of this week, some 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system saw their verification badges disappear, including prominent journalists, athletes, celebrities and even politicians.

This left a number of media personalities complaining about the move even while trying to feign that they "don't care"... meanwhile, this is what 'not caring' looks like:

Others complained in a sarcastic tone for different reasons...

Some degree of confusion and chaos is ensuing...

After a rocky few weeks and an extended deadline to give some people more time to decide, Twitter began removing the symbol from accounts on Thursday. But some people seemed to inexplicably still have theirs while there were plenty of instances of imposters.

Pope Francis lost his checkmark, as did Donald Trump and Christiano Ronaldo. Meanwhile, LeBron James still had a blue check by his name even though the athlete previously said he wouldn’t pay for a subscription.

“My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven’t,” the author Stephen King tweeted.

Musk said he was “paying for a few personally,” including King, James, and Star Trek actor William Shatner.

While Musk is certainly unlikely to make everyone happy, particularly the likes of NPR and CBC and others, the new policy in effect evens the playing field: no longer is the platform structured to promote and elevate mainstream "gatekeepers". 

And behold a checkless CNN...