San Francisco, California - Following objections from public broadcasters in several countries, Twitter has dropped its tags labelling media outlets as "state-affiliated" and "government-funded" on the influential social media platform.

The move also affects the accounts of Chinese state news agency Xinhua and the state-controlled channel Russia Today, blocked in Europe, which are no longer labelled as being financed by the government.

Twitter had originally introduced the tag to draw attention to possible state influence on reporting. However, owner Elon Musk drew anger from media outlets after US public broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) was first labelled as "state-affiliated" and later as "government-funded" on his platform.

Other public broadcasters, including Britain's BBC, were soon also tagged with the "government-funded media" label.

NPR objected to the tag, arguing that it was editorially independent and that less than 1% of its $300 million annual budget came from government funding.

After criticism from the BBC, Twitter changed the label on the broadcaster's main account to "publicly funded."

NPR, PBS, and Canadian broadcaster CBC suspended their Twitter activity in protest at the tags. On Friday, neither the broadcasters nor Musk initially commented on the labels' removal.

The removal of the tags related to the funding of media organizations comes as scores of legacy blue ticks have disappeared from previously verified accounts on the platform, which is looking to push more people to sign up for its new subscription model, Twitter Blue.