When Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced steps to tighten down on users avoiding payments for “Twitter Blue,” The New York Times lost its verified check mark on Sunday.
On March 23, Musk and the official Twitter Verified account announced that the social media platform would give verified users until April 1 to apply and maintain their status. Individuals and organizations who failed to pay the $8 monthly subscription fee or $1,000 monthly fee for organizations would start to lose their blue check mark and verified status.
Musk responded to a tweet by saying that if the New York Times refused to pay for a subscription, this might also apply to them. The primary Twitter account of the newspaper lost its verified status shortly after that.
“The real tragedy of @NYTimes is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting,” Musk tweeted.
He added, “Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It’s unreadable. They would have far more real followers if they only posted their top articles. Same applies to all publications.”
Although he did not go into detail about the New York Times losing its verified status, he later criticized the publication for being “hypocritical” in that it required subscribers to pay for their subscriptions while not requiring same for Twitter users.
“NY Times is being incredible hypocritical here, as they are super aggressive about forcing everyone to pay *their* subscription,” Musk wrote.
The New York Times maintained in a tech piece on Friday that it will neither pay for its verified badge nor compensate its journalists for the designation.
“The New York Times, which has nearly 55 million followers on Twitter, said on Thursday that it would not pay for the verified badge for its institutional accounts, including @nytimes. The Times also told its journalists that it would not reimburse them for a Twitter Blue subscription, except in rare cases when it was necessary for reporting,” the article stated.
As of Sunday, New York Times’ subsidiary accounts, including New York Times Opinion, NYT Politics, NYT Climate, and New York Times World, still had their badges despite the publication’s main account having lost its check mark.
Several news organizations still maintain their verified status, like the Associated Press and the Washington Post.
Throughout the past year, Musk has regularly criticized the New York Times as fake news or propaganda.
“It is tragic how far The New York Times has fallen – basically just boring af far left brainwashing at this point. The boring part is truly unforgivable!” Musk tweeted.
