Elon Musk threatens to give NPR’s Twitter handle to another company if they don’t return to the platform.

Ben ZeisloftMay 4, 2023

Elon Musk Threatens to Take Away NPR’s Twitter Handle

In a shocking move, Elon Musk has threatened to take away NPR’s Twitter handle unless the news outlet continues to post on the platform. NPR had stopped using Twitter last month after Musk temporarily affixed a label to the account noting that NPR receives funds from government entities. Musk sent a “series of emails” to business reporter Bobby Allyn on Tuesday, asking if NPR would start posting on Twitter again or if he should reassign @NPR to another company.

Twitter’s Inactive Account Policy

Allyn noted that the current Twitter terms of service define inactive accounts as those which do not log into the platform at least once every 30 days. Musk replied in another email, “Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant. Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR.”

NPR’s Outrage Over Twitter’s “State-Affiliated Media” Tag

NPR expressed outrage over Twitter’s decision to add a “state-affiliated media” tag to the company’s profile, a label that placed NPR in the company of foreign state-run media outlets such as TASS in Russia and Xinhua News in China. Although NPR was created with an act of Congress, Twitter previously listed NPR as an exception in the United States because of the “editorial independence” maintained by the company.

Musk removed the “state-affiliated media” label from the NPR account nearly one month ago after Allyn told him that the outlet receives only 1% of its operating budget from government funds. The account has 8.8 million followers and has remained inactive since early April.

Musk’s Plans for Twitter

Musk, who also serves as chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, said he bought Twitter at the end of last year for $44 billion in order to reserve a corner of the public square for open dialogue. The billionaire entrepreneur introduced a new revenue structure based on subscriptions rather than advertisements after he noted that a number of advertisers have ended their relationships with the company at the behest of leftist organizations, dealing a significant blow to the business.

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” Musk remarked on the platform. “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”