Britain First leader Paul Golding leads an anti-Islamic march on April 1, 2017 in London, England.
Wiktor Szymanowicz | Future publications | Getty Images
Twitter has dubbed Britain’s far-right political party Britain First an “official organization”, raising questions on the direction Elon Musk is taking the platform after a review of content moderation and vetting.
Britain First now receives a golden checkmark on the social networking site – a logo that costs $1,000 a month and is reserved for businesses and non-profits. After I click on the checkmark within the text box, it says “This account has been verified since it is an official organization on Twitter.”
Britain First is a nationalist political party in the UK that campaigns against multiculturalism and what it sees as the Islamization of Britain. Its leader Paul Golding, who was formerly a member of the neo-Nazi National First party, has been involved in quite a few controversies through the years, including provocative behavior at several mosques.
Britain First, Gold and deputy leader Jada Fransen were suspended by Twitter in 2017 for violating its rules against hate speech. All three have since had their accounts restored.
CNBC has reached out to Britain First for comment.
On April 20, roughly 400,000 verified legacy Twitter accounts lost their blue checkmarks as a part of Musk’s bid to get more subscription money. Individual users must pay $8 for a Twitter Blue membership, which supplies them features such as a blue checkmark and the flexibility to edit tweets. Meanwhile, organizations pays over $1,000 per 30 days to confirm their accounts and their associated individual accounts with a gold hook.
In a surprise reversal of the verified Twitter purge, many celebrities had their blue checks reinstated over the weekend. Musk has revealed that he personally paid for some, including author Stephen King, actor William Shatner, and basketball star LeBron James.
Twitter also has separate gray checkmarks for presidency accounts – US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and French President Emmanuel Macron all have gray checkmarks. This feature is free.
Brands flocked to Twitter ads en masse within the wake of Musk’s $44 billion deal that was finalized in October 2022, expressing concern that the app was failing to handle hateful posts. Musk calls himself a “free speech absolutist” and says he desires to encourage free expression on Twitter.
News organizations have also left the platform attributable to concerns that it undermines their credibility. Musk’s Twitter labeled the accounts of several media outlets, including NPR, the BBC and the CBC, as “state-related”, which alarmed the organization’s management and journalists.
In response to those labels, NPR and CBC announced that they might stop using Twitter in an official capability to disseminate reports. Twitter quietly dropped these government-funded media labels on Friday.
– Rohan Goswami of CNBC contributed to this report
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