Twitter Strips NYT of Its Blue Check – Musk Mocks Its Account

🐦Twitter is making good on its promise to remove verified status from accounts unless they pay a monthly fee — at least for some.

On Sunday, 📰The New York Times’ main account lost its blue check mark, which verifies the account belongs to the paper.

🐦Twitter’s owner 👤Elon Musk wrote early Monday morning, “The real tragedy of is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting.”

“Also, their feed is the 🐦Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It’s unreadable. They would have far more real followers if they only posted their top articles. Same applies to all publications,” he added.

In March, the 🐦Twitter Verified account wrote, “On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks. To keep your blue check mark on 🐦Twitter, individuals can sign up for 🐦Twitter Blue.”

It shared a link for organizations to keep their blue check mark as well.

🐦Twitter Blue is the company’s subscription plan. Individual users can pay $8 per month to receive a blue check mark and extra features.

For companies, the cost is $1,000 per month.

However, since Saturday, it appears relatively few accounts lost their blue check marks for not paying.

The Washington Post cited data from Travis Brown, a software developer, which showed that only a few dozen accounts saw their verified status removed.

The Times, which has 55 million followers and is 🐦Twitter’s 24th most followed account, told The Post it does not plan to “pay the monthly fee for check mark status for our institutional 🐦Twitter accounts.”

Along with several other news outlets, the White House reportedly does not plan to pay for 🐦Twitter Blue.

On Sunday, Musk tweeted and then deleted a promise to give users a “few weeks grace” to pay for verified status.

However, he said the check marks will be removed quickly if users state they will not pay.