The New York Times’ Twitter account was stripped of its “verified” status on Sunday, days after the paper said it would not pass the $1,000-per-month fee that Twitter CEO Elon Musk began charging for the once coveted checkmark.
As of Sunday morning, the New York Times Twitter account — which has 55 million followers — appeared without a check mark next to its name for the first time in years after the new fee-based tag was rolled out.
Under the new system, individual users will have to pay $8 per month for a blue verified check, while businesses will have to pay a fee of more than $1,000 for a gold verified check.
In addition to The Times, several news outlets such as Politico, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Buzzfeed have announced that they will not pay the fee, nor will they compensate reporters who choose to pay for the checkmark.
Musk appears to have taken a keen interest in the New York Times’ disapproval, however, as Sunday morning came, his account was one of the only ones to lose its checkmark after Musk mocked its cancellation Saturday night. The Wall Street Journal has since lost its mark, too.
He also said that The Times was “incredibly hypocritical” for refusing to pay while charging its readers for its subscription fee.
On Sunday mornings, the New York Times’ primary Twitter profile, @nytimes, was no longer festooned with a gold checkmark.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk said the New York Times was “incredibly hypocritical” for refusing to pay while asking its readers for its subscription fee.
In late March, Twitter announced that it would end the old checkmark system starting April 1, and that businesses and people hoping to get their accounts verified would need to bypass the new fee.
The New York Times announced last Thursday its plans not to pay for the checkmark, and only do so for its journalists “on rare occasions when it is necessary to report.”
The Washington Post responded in line with The Times, telling CNN’s Oliver Darcy “it’s clear that verified checkmarks no longer represent authority and expertise.”
Management at the Los Angeles Times circulated a similar opinion in an internal memo sent to employees, according to Darcy.
“First and foremost, verification no longer establishes authority or credibility,” wrote an managing editor at the Los Angeles Times. Instead, it just means that someone has paid for a Twitter Blue subscription.
Second, while Twitter remains an important news-gathering tool, it is no longer as reliable as it once was. We won’t pay to verify our organization on Twitter either. It remains unclear whether there is actual value in doing so, other than identifying all of us as employees of the LA Times.
Shortly after midnight Saturday, Musk responded to a Twitter user mocking The Times’ decision not to pay the check, replying, “Okay, we’ll clear it then.” Soon after, the post checkmark disappeared.
Hours later, Musk tweeted that the paper was “propaganda.”
“The real tragedy of[The New York Times]is that its propaganda is not interesting,” Musk wrote early Sunday morning.
And feeding them is the equivalent of Twitter diarrhea. “It is illegible,” he added.
The New York Times said Thursday that it will not pay to verify her Twitter account
A number of high-profile figures have come out since Twitter’s announcement to say they will not pay verification fees.
Basketball player LeBron James said Friday that he will not pay the $8 fee. He tweeted: “Welp guess my blue ticks are going to be gone soon because if you knew me I wouldn’t pay all five.”
James incorrectly thought it would cost him five dollars but the price is actually eight – and the feature called “Twitter Blue” is already available to users who are willing to pay for it.
Others, including Chrissy Teigen, Dionne Warwick, and rapper Ice-T, have suggested they wouldn’t pay for the feature.
Last week, Musk overtook Barack Obama as the most followed Twitter user — with 133.08 million followers compared to Obama’s 13.04 million.
This followed reports that the CEO of Twitter had ordered the company’s engineers to program the algorithm to “boost” his tweets.
