New episode of Twitter chaos: Norway asks to remove Nigeria labels

OSLO: Norway’s foreign ministry complained to Twitter Tuesday of being labelled as an organisation representing Nigeria, in an apparent mix-up of the two countries’ names.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere’s Twitter account was also tagged as representing Nigeria, as was that of Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt.

“Dear @TwitterSupport, as much as we enjoy our excellent bilateral relations and close alphabetical vicinity with Nigeria, we would much appreciate if you could label us as Norway,” the Norwegian foreign ministry tweeted.

Twitter places labels and small flag icons on some accounts to signal affiliation with governments. 

Government accounts (institutional accounts, elected or appointed officials, and multilateral organisations), some political organisations like political parties, commercial companies including business partners, major brands, media outlets and publishers, and some other public figures are given the designation of official profile.

Labels on state-affiliated profiles give users more information about the accounts that are under the authority of specific state-affiliated media organisations and people closely connected to those organisations.

Government labels are applied to accounts from the key nations where Twitter is active that are highly involved in geopolitics and diplomacy.

"These labels also contain information about the country the account is affiliated with and whether it is operated by a government representative or a state-affiliated media entity. Additionally, a small icon of a flag is included, to signal the account’s status as a government account or of a podium for state-affiliated media," the social media site said.

Previous launch

The Verge reported that despite warnings from Twitter's own trust and safety personnel, the microblogging platform's "Twitter Blue" subscriptions went live.

Following that, several "verified" accounts started to imitate well-known figures or brands.

A phoney Twitter account for the pharmaceutical corporation "Eli Lilly" has also surfaced. It said that insulin was now free.

The Verge said that this drove many advertisers away from the platform. Musk then quickly abandoned the $7.99 service once it had been introduced.

Any account that attempted to mimic someone else would be disabled, according to a tweet from Musk, unless the account's owner acknowledged it to be a parody account.

Regarding the existing approach of multi-coloured verification, Musk described it as "painful, but necessary."

He said that a 'longer explanation' of how the system would work would come out 'next week'.