Enlarge (credit: STEFANI REYNOLDS / Contributor | AFP)
After a weekend where many Twitter users waited to witness the moment when their legacy verified badges disappeared, the official Twitter handle of The New York Times became one of the first accounts to lose its verified status. While many legacy accounts still have their badges, the speedy removal of the badge from one of the platform’s most influential organizations was seemingly personally directed by Elon Musk, The Washington Post reported.
In response to a meme joking about the Times’ decision not to pay $1,000 a month to keep the gold check mark that Twitter sells to verify businesses, Musk tweeted on Saturday, “Oh ok, we’ll take it off then.” On Sunday, Musk deleted a tweet that said legacy verified accounts would be given “a few weeks grace” before the check marks vanish “unless they tell they won’t pay now, in which we will remove it.”
Making an example out of revoking the Times’ verified status seemed personal to Musk. In several tweets, Musk mocked the Times—which the Post noted is Twitter’s 24th most followed account—calling its news articles “propaganda” that “isn’t even interesting” and describing its Twitter feed as “diarrhea” that’s “unreadable.” He also tweeted that the Times was being “hypocritical” because the news organization is “super aggressive about forcing everyone to pay their subscription” fees. (Two years ago, the Times increased its digital subscription price for the first time, CNN reported, raising it to $17 a month.)
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