Twitter has removed the verification checkmark from the main account of The New York Times, one of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s most hated news organizations.
The removal comes as many of Twitter’s high-profile users are bracing for the loss of the blue ticks that helped verify their identities and distinguish them from impostors on the social media platform.
Musk, owner of Twitter, set a Saturday deadline for verified users to purchase a premium Twitter subscription or lose controls on their profiles. The Times said in a story Thursday that it would not pay Twitter for verification of its institutional accounts.
Early Sunday, Musk tweeted that the Times would be unchecked. He later posted disparaging remarks about the paper, which aggressively reports on Twitter, and about flaws in partially automated driving systems at Tesla, the electric car company also led by Musk.
Other Times accounts, such as the business news and opinion pages, still had blue or gold check marks as of Sunday, as did several reporters for the news organization.
“We do not plan to pay the monthly fee for tick status for our institutional Twitter accounts,” the Times said in a statement on Sunday. “We also do not reimburse reporters for Twitter Blue for personal accounts, except in rare cases where this status is 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, still had them on its accounts as of Sunday afternoon.
Twitter has not responded to Associated Press emailed questions about the unchecking of The New York Times.
The fees for keeping the checks range from $8 per month for individual internet users to a starting fee of $1,000 per month to verify an organization, plus $50 per month for each affiliate or employee account. Twitter doesn’t verify individual accounts to make sure they are who they say they are, as was the case with the previous blue check handed out to public figures and others during the platform’s pre-Musk administration.
While the cost of Twitter Blue subscriptions may seem like nothing to Twitter’s most famous commentators, celebrity users, from basketball star LeBron James to Star Trek’s William Shatner, have been hesitant to get involved. American sitcom Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander promised to leave the platform if Musk removes his blue tick.
The White House is also passing on enrollment in premium accounts, according to a memo sent to staff. While Twitter has awarded a free gray mark to President Joe Biden and members of his cabinet, lower-ranking employees don’t get Twitter Blue benefits unless they pay for them themselves.
“If you see impersonations that you believe violate Twitter’s stated impersonation policy, notify Twitter through Twitter’s public impersonation portal,” said the staff memo from White House official Rob Flaherty.
Alexander, the actor, said there are bigger problems in the world, but without the blue mark: “anyone can claim to be me”.
After buying Twitter for $44 billion last October, Musk is trying to boost the struggling platform’s revenue by getting more people to pay for a premium subscription. But his move also echoes his claim that the blue verification marks have become an undeserved or “corrupt” status symbol for elite personalities, news reporters and others who received free verification from Twitter’s previous leadership.
In addition to protecting celebrities from impersonators, one of Twitter’s main reasons for marking profiles with a blue check from about 14 years ago was to verify politicians, activists, and people who had suddenly found themselves in the news, as well as little-known journalists at small publications around the world, as an additional tool to curb misinformation coming from accounts impersonating humans. Most “legacy blue checks” aren’t household names, nor were they meant to be.
One of Musk’s first product moves after acquiring Twitter was to launch a service that awards blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month. But it was soon overrun by imposters, including accounts posing as Nintendo, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, and Musk’s companies Tesla and SpaceX, so Twitter had to temporarily suspend the service days after launch.
The relaunched service costs $8 per month for web users and $11 per month for users of the iPhone or Android apps. Subscribers would see fewer ads, post longer videos and have their tweets appear more prominently.