Twitter removes the check mark from the New York Times

Twitter removed the check mark on the main account of The New York Times, one of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s most despised news organizations.

The removal comes as many of Twitter’s high-profile users brace for the loss of the blue checkmarks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors on the social media platform.

Musk, who is the owner of twitter, set a Saturday deadline for verified users to purchase a premium subscription to Twitter or lose controls on their profiles. The Times said in a story on Thursday that it would not pay Twitter for verification of its institutional accounts.

Early Sunday, Musk tweeted that the Times check mark would be removed. He later posted disparaging comments about the newspaper, which has aggressively reported on Twitter, and about failures in partially automated driving systems at Tesla, the electric car company, which Musk also runs.

Other Times accounts, such as its opinion and business news pages, still had blue or gold check marks as of Sunday, as did several reporters from the news organization.

“We do not plan to pay the monthly fee for checkmark status for our institutional Twitter accounts,” the Times said in a statement on Sunday. “We also will not reimburse reporters for Twitter Blue for personal accounts, except in rare cases where this status would be essential for reporting purposes,” the newspaper said in a statement on Sunday.

The Associated Press, which has said it won’t pay for the checkmarks either, was still showing them in its accounts as of noon Sunday.

Twitter did not respond to emailed questions from the Associated Press about removing the check mark from The New York Times.

Costs to maintain verification marks range from $8 per month for individual web users to a starting price of $1,000 per month to verify an organization, plus $50 per month for each affiliate or employee account. Twitter does not verify individual accounts to make sure they are who they say they are, as was the case with the previous blue check given to public figures and others during Musk’s pre-platform administration.

While the cost of Twitter Blue subscriptions may seem insignificant to Twitter’s most famous commenters, celebrity users, from basketball star LeBron James to Star Trek’s William Shatner, have been reluctant to join. The actor of the American sitcom Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, has vowed to leave the platform if Musk takes away his blue check.

The White House will also stop signing up for premium accounts, according to a memo sent to staff. While Twitter has provided a free gray mark for President Joe Biden and his cabinet members, lower-level staff won’t get the benefits of Twitter Blue unless they pay for it themselves.

“If you see phishing that you believe violates Twitter’s stated phishing policies, please alert Twitter using Twitter’s public phishing portal,” White House official Rob Flaherty’s staff memo read.

Alexander, the actor, said there are bigger problems in the world, but without the blue mark, “anyone can claim it’s me.”

After buying Twitter for $44 billion in October last year, Musk has been trying to boost the struggling platform’s revenue by pushing more people to pay for a premium subscription. But his move also reflects his contention that blue checkmarks have become a symbol of undeserved or “corrupt” status for elite personalities, news reporters and others bestowed on them by Twitter’s previous leadership. free verification.

In addition to protecting celebrities from impersonators, one of Twitter’s main reasons for marking profiles with a blue checkmark starting about 14 years ago was to verify politicians, activists, and people they suddenly found themselves on. the news, as well as little-known journalists at small publications around the world, as an additional tool to curb misinformation from accounts impersonating people. Most “legacy blue checks” are not household names and were not meant to be.

One of Musk’s first product moves after taking over Twitter was to launch a service that awards blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month. But it was quickly inundated with impostor accounts, including those posing as Nintendo, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, and Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX ventures, prompting Twitter to temporarily suspend the service days after its launch.

The relaunched service costs $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for users of its iPhone or Android apps. Subscribers are supposed to see fewer ads, be able to post longer videos, and have their tweets stand out more.