Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, he has taken steps to protect us from the inevitable distortions that come from a global social media platform with such awesome powers. He has pledged to make it a trustworthy source of news.It has been presented as a public service to anyone who relies on the social media platforms for unbiased news reporting; i.e. the 13% of English Canadians and 6% of French Canadians who get, comment on, or share news from Twitter according to the 2022 Digital News Report.One of the most visible – and controversial - steps taken is to identify government and publicly-funded media organizations.Words and definitions matter here. Twitter offers these definitions:

• State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.
• Government-funded media is defined as outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet's funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.
• Publicly-funded media refers to media organizations that receive funding from license fees, individual contributions, public financing, and commercial financing.

All this is part of an effort to make Twitter more accurate. So says its new owner.Except that it's not. It's murky. And it's a foil aimed at undermining the credibility of legitimate news media like ABC Australia, NPR, PBS and to erode the public trust in these outlets' journalism.It's also a gift to anyone who believes these organizations' reporting is biased and promotes views many viscerally disagree with.No one understands this better than the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and his advisors.Many Canadians are apparently anxious and angry about how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation they once cherished as a nation-building institution has been taken over by propagandists. Sadly, this has left them with no choice but to demand that the public broadcaster be defunded.Still, defunding the CBC won't happen overnight. Stephen Harper dreamed of it. His successors mused about it. The current Conservative leader is fundraising about it. He's also picked a public fight with the CBC's CEO, who shouldn't have engaged with him in the first place.Encouraged by Twitter's steps to ensure greater transparency on its platform by informing its users when there is a risk of misinformation, Pierre Poilievre published a letter he sent on April 11 to Twitter demanding that the CBC be given the label Government-funded media. The letter referred to Twitter's Platform Use Guidelines and the CBC's government funding and ended with this: “In the interest of transparency. I believe that Twitter should apply the Government-funded Media label to the CBC's various news-related accounts, including @CBC. @CBCNews. and @CBCAlerts.”But that was never going to be the end of it.Mr. Poilievre then published the letter on Twitter along with the text “We must protect Canadians against disinformation and manipulation by state media”.Things move fast in the Conservatives' war room. What began as a request for an accurate label of Government-funded media was quickly turned into “state media” to suit the leader's narrative. An example of the very disinformation and misinformation the letter to Twitter was supposedly meant to prevent.Twitter promptly complied. On April 16, Poilievre tweeted the breaking news: “CBC officially exposed as government-funded media. Now people know that it is Trudeau propaganda, not news”.The CBC argued that the government “only covers a portion of its expenses while advertising revenue covers costs across all its platforms”. To which Twitter's owner himself responded: “Just trying to be accurate. Would they be ok if we said 70% govt funded?” Twitter promptly changed the label to “70% Government-funded Media”. Then someone tweeted “69% Give them the benefit of the doubt” and Elon responded “Good point, generosity is always the right move. 69% it is!”. Poilievre had to have the last word by tweeting “There. Now everyone is happy”.The whole episode reminded me of something Logan Roy said to his kids in a recent Succession episode: “You're not serious figures. I love you. But you are not serious people.”And yet, one is one of the world's richest and most influential people. The other is running for Prime Minister of Canada.It was a silly stunt. And the backlash apparently made Musk change Twitter's policy.Musk was probably told to grow up by his biographer, who also wrote Steve Jobs biography. Forbes is reporting today that “Twitter has dropped all of its labels for media, and when asked why, said it was a suggestion from Walter Isaacson, who is writing a biography on the CEO.”Despite all the silliness, there might be a silver lining in Twitter having temporarily slapped these labels on government-funded media.Accusing the CBC of being the Liberal government's state-controlled media arm might have served as a reminder that government-funded public broadcasters like the BBC, NPR and PBS aren't like FOX News, a publicly-funded media according to Twitter's nomenclature.What label should Twitter slap on the account of a news outlet that just settled a historic lawsuit for having aired news about how Dominion Voting Machines was used to steal the 2022 election when it knew it was untrue?It's probably a moot point.Now Mr. Musk will likely have to deal with another label issue: the removal of the blue checkmarks from formerly verified users on the platform - including celebrities and journalists - leaving them only for those who subscribe to Twitter's $8-per-month Twitter Blue service.Politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh, and the Premier of Quebec, François Legault, have also been stripped of the blue checkmark. Of note, Pierre Poilievre seems to now be paying for the Twitter Blue Service.Québec celebrity Guy A. Lepage summed it all up yesterday when he announced to his 500,000 followers that he was quitting Twitter: “Only 6% of Quebeckers use Twitter, which is not very much. But that includes 100% of morons, which is too much. Paying to be insulted is too much.”Éric Blais is the president of Headspace Marketing in Toronto. He has helped build brands for over 35 years and is a frequent commentator on political marketing, most recently on CBC's Power & Politics.