Instagram Begins Labeling Media Accounts Under State Shades

JAKARTA - Instagram has begun labeling state-supported news media accounts. It follows a policy announced by parent company Facebook last October and went into effect on its own social media network in June.

This was first discovered by journalist Casey Michel. Users in the United States (US) will see the label appear on media profile pages and tagged posts. If the user taps the label, they will be redirected to a support page where they can find out more about the policy.

However, the label on this media account was pinned prior to the 2020 presidential election in the US on November 3. In the run-up to the election, Facebook continued to face criticism for being a hotbed of misinformation on its platform.

Instagram has begun rolling out new “state-controlled media” labels — here are the ones for Kremlin outlets aimed at younger Americans: pic.twitter.com/vyUySA1zbW

- Casey Michel 🇰🇿 (@cjcmichel) October 5, 2020

At the end of last September, Joe Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon called the company the leading spreader of disinformation in the country (US).

"Instagram defines state-controlled media as media outlets that Instagram believes may be partially or completely under the editorial control of their government, based on our own research and assessment of a set of criteria developed for this purpose," said Instagram as quoted by Next Web, Tuesday 6 October.

"We hold these accounts to a higher standard of transparency because we believe they combine the influence of media organizations with state support," he added.

When the company detailed the policy in June, it consulted 65 experts to develop internal criteria to decide when state-controlled labels would be appropriate.

Even so, labeled media have the option to file an official appeal if it is found that Instagram is mislabeled. In addition, Facebook also said it plans to add labels to ads on Instagram in the near future.