Twitter has removed the gold "verified" marker from the New York Times' main account, as CEO Elon Musk bashed the news organization as "propaganda" on Sunday and the platform transitioned to a paid verification scheme.
Musk took over the microblogging platform last year and made
a priority of opening the "blue checkmark," indicating an authentic
account, to paying subscribers.
The site announced it would start winding down
"legacy" blue checkmarks from April 1.
The New York Times was among news media companies, firms and
charities that had already lost their blue tick and were tagged as verified
business accounts with a gold tick under Musk's new system.
To retain the gold tick after the rollout of the
subscription service dubbed Twitter Blue, these groups would have to pay a
monthly fee of $1,000 in the United States, and $50 for each additional
affiliated account.
The New York Times said it would not pay for a verified
business account and would subscribe for a blue tick only for journalists
finding it essential for their reporting needs.
As of Sunday, the organization's main account, with nearly
55 million followers, had lost its gold checkmark, though affiliate accounts,
such as for its travel and opinion sections, retained the ticks.
Many media groups and personalities who also announced they
would not pay for Twitter Blue, including basketball star LeBron James, have
retained blue or gold checkmarks on their accounts.
In the early hours of Sunday, Musk targeted the New York
Times in several tweets, saying, "The real tragedy of @NYTimes is that
their propaganda isn't even interesting" and calling its main feed the
"equivalent of diarrhoea" and "unreadable."
According to Travis Brown, a Berlin-based software developer
who tracks social-media platforms, only a few dozen accounts have so far been
unverified, suspended or had profile elements removed since Saturday.
He said there had been a recent jump in the number of
accounts that had made the switch from legacy to the new system -- some 60,000
in the past week -- but that they were "mostly small accounts, and very
few had legacy verification."
Since its creation in 2009, the blue tick became a signature
element that helped the platform become a trusted forum for newsmakers and
campaigners.
But Musk and his fans said the decision of who got the
coveted checkmark was made by fiat in a secretive procedure, and they called it
a symbol of an unfair class system.
The changes under Musk put pressure on companies,
journalists and celebrities who used Twitter as their main channel of
communication and relied on the blue and gold ticks for credibility.
They also raise the spectre of imposters and jokesters
paying for an officially verified, but totally fake account.