The New York Times’ Twitter account was stripped of its ‘verified’ status on Sunday, days after the newspaper announced it would not fork over the $1,000-per-month fee Twitter CEO Elon Musk began charging for the once coveted check-mark.
As of Sunday morning The New York Times Twitter account – which boasts 55million followers – appeared without a check mark alongside its name for the first time in years after the new fee-based check mark rolled out at the end of the day Saturday.
Under the new system, individual users will have to pay $8-per-month for a verified blue check, while businesses are required to fork over the $1,000 fee in return for a gold verified check.
In addition to The Times, numerous news outlets like Politico, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and Buzzfeed, announced they would not pay for the fee, and would not reimburse reporters who chose to pay for a check mark.
Musk appeared to have taken a keen interest in The New York Times’ refusal, however, as come Sunday morning its account was one of the only that had lost its check mark after Musk joked about revoking it Saturday night. The Wall Street Journal has since lost its check mark, too.
He also said The Times was ‘being incredible hypocritical’ for refusing to pay while asking its readers for its own subscription fees.
On Sunday morning The New York Times’ primary Twitter profile, @nytimes, was no longer adorned with a gold verification mark
Twitter CEO Elon Musk said The New York Times was was ‘being incredible hypocritical’ for refusing to pay while asking its readers for its own subscription fees
In late March, Twitter announced it would be ‘winding down’ its old check mark system beginning April 1, and that businesses and people hoping to verify their accounts would need to fork over the new fees.
Last Thursday The New York Times announced its plans not to pay for the verified check mark, and only to do so for its journalists ‘in rare cases when it was necessary for reporting.’
The Washington Post responded in step with The Times, telling CNN’s Oliver Darcy ‘it’s evident that verified checkmarks no longer represent authority and expertise.’
Management at the LA Times circulated a similar sentiment in an internal memo sent to employees, according to Darcy.
‘First of all, verification no longer establishes authority or credibility,’ a managing editor at the LA Times wrote. ‘Instead, it only means that someone has paid for a Twitter Blue subscription.’
‘Secondly, while twitter remains an important tool for newsgathering, it is not as reliable as it once was. We will not be paying to verify our organization on twitter either. It’s still unclear if there’s actual value in doing so, beyond identifying all of us as L.A. Times staffers.’
Just after midnight Saturday, Musk responded to a Twitter user mocking The Times’ decision not to pay for the check, responding ‘Oh ok, we’ll take it off then.’ Soon after, the publication’s check mark was gone.
Hours later, Musk tweeted that the paper was ‘propaganda.’
‘The real tragedy of [The New York Times] is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting,’ wrote Musk early Sunday morning.
‘Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It’s unreadable,’ he added.
The New York Times said on Thursday it would not pay for its Twitter account to be verified
A number of prominent figures have come out since the Twitter announcement to say they would not pay the fee for verification.
Basketballer LeBron James said on Friday he would not pay the $8 fee. He tweeted: ‘Welp guess my blue tick will be gone soon cause if you know me I ain’t paying the five.’
James incorrectly thought it would cost him five dollars but it the price is actually eight – and the feature, which is called ‘Twitter Blue’ is already available for users who are willing to pay for it.
Others, including Chrissy Teigen, Dionne Warwick, and rapper Ice-T also suggested they would not pay for the feature.
Last week Musk surpassed Barack Obama as the most followed Twitter user – with 133.08 million followers compared to Obama’s 133.04 million.
That came after reports that the Twitter CEO ordered company engineers to program the algorithm to ‘boost’ his tweets.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk