Ticked off: Ukraine launches campaign to force Twitter to strip blue checkmark from Russian Foreign Ministry’s Crimean account
In what might be cyber warfare’s most minor skirmish yet, Ukrainian officials are leading a charge to strip an account belonging to Russia’s representatives on the disputed Crimean peninsula of its verified status on Twitter.
On Wednesday, local media reported that Kiev’s ambassador to the US has sent an official missive to the San Francisco-based social media giant, asking that they remove the blue checkmark from the account run by the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Crimean mission.
The move is apparently a joint effort between the Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its consulate in the West Coast city. “The public pages of the Russian occupation authorities in Crimea cannot be clearly designated as official and legitimate,” the embassy stressed, reiterating their belief that the reabsorption of the peninsula in 2014 constituted an illegal occupation.
Also on rt.com Twitter labels RT & Sputnik but NOT BBC, NPR & VOA as it launches blitz on state media staff & govt officialsThe acting representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry office in Simferopol, the second largest city in Crimea, struck back at the campaign. “Our Twitter account has been verified for a long time,” Artem Berezovsky said, “so the controversy that the representatives of Ukraine have now launched looks rather strange.”
He claimed that “the successes of Crimea, which [the Foreign Ministry mission] shares with overseas viewers, apparently could not pass unnoticed by our Ukrainian partners. But may God be their judge.” He added that the only information the account posts is verified and factual in nature.
In August last year, Russian media expressed concern about censorship on Twitter after a number of accounts belonging to state-backed media outlets were handed prominent labels and removed from recommendations to users. RT and Sputnik were among those targeted, but Twitter said that “state-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, will not be labeled.”
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