Twitter mislabels Norwegian government as Nigerian organisation

Nordic nation's Foreign Ministry asks for issue to be resolved

Twitter has experienced some problems since Elon Musk took over. Reuters

The twitter accounts of Norway’s Foreign Ministry, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister have been labelled as Nigerian government organisations and officials in another embarrassing blunder for the tech giant.

The company increasingly relies on automation for account verification after new chief executive Elon Musk laid off about half of the its staff. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry politely asked the company to resolve the issue, pointing out that Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store and Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt had a similar "Nigerian government official" label.

“Dear @TwitterSupport, as much as we enjoy our excellent bilateral relations and close alphabetical vicinity with Nigeria, we would much appreciate if you could label us as Norway,” the official Foreign Ministry account wrote on Twitter.

By Tuesday evening, Twitter had corrected the error.

The site has long been plagued by automated mislabelling of tweets but Mr Musk has promised to shake up the company and improve service, increasing verified accounts and removing bot accounts, which are used to spread disinformation in political propaganda campaigns.

In August, dozens of accounts run by doctors and scientists focused on Covid-19 were mislabelled as disinformation and in some cases, suspended from the site. Twitter later apologised for what it said was a technical error.

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