Musk Reacts Over Removal of Twitter Verification Badge

In a bid to keep to its targets, the Chief Executive Officer of Twitter Elon Musk on Sunday removed the blue tick verification of the New York Times.

The New York Times founded in 1851 is a daily newspaper based in New York City, United States of America, with a worldwide readership reported in 2022 to comprise 740,000 paid print subscribers, and 8.6 million paid digital subscribers.

The New York Times had said it would not subscribe to Twitter Blue, except where it may be needed for their reporting.

It was gathered that the removal of the NY Times appeared as punishment for not accepting to pay for Twitter service.

A tweet from a verified UX/UI Twitter account (@cb_doge) read, “New York Times says It Won’t Pay For Twitter Verification”

Consequently, Musk, on Sunday, relied on the tweet, noting it would remove the verification of the news outlet.

“Oh ok, we’ll take it off then,” he replied.

He went further on his personal Twitter account to tweet “The real tragedy of @NYTimes 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. The same applies to all publications.”

A check by our correspondent on Monday shows that the verification badge on the US news outlet has been removed and that appears to be the only account hit by the removal as of the moment.

Recall that in March, Musk, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX, disclosed that from April 1, legacy verified users would have their blue ticks removed from the service unless they paid the US$8 a month subscription fee for Twitter Blue while organizations pay US$1,000 a month.

However, as of Monday, blue ticks of legacy verified users who are yet to pay the US$8 a month subscription fee for Twitter Blue remain, our correspondent observed.

On Sunday, Twitter also removed the information that differentiated between legacy verified accounts and Twitter Blue subscribers, with users told when clicking the tick that the account is “verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account.”

According to Washington Post, the removal of legacy verification badges may take a long time because the process may require a lot of manual elements.