After stating it would not pay for Twitter Blue to maintain its verified checkmark, ‘The New York Times’ was among the first to lose theirs.
Twitter lived up to its promise from last week about stripping away the verified checkmark of organizations that didn’t pay up…at least where The New York Times is concerned. The newspaper found itself without its gold verified checkmark over the weekend. NYT was one of numerous media outlets that sported the gold check as a sign that it was a verified media organization.
The Washington Post still had theirs as of Monday morning. Clicking on it on the Post’s profile calls up a message: “This account is verified because it’s an official organization on Twitter.” Like The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times also said it does not intend to pay for the verification, Buzzfeed reported. As of Monday morning, its verification tick remained, too.
Forbes, which reported NYT’s sudden loss of the gold check on Sunday, still had their own gold check.
So why is NYT one of the only major media outlets that seems to have already lost its mark? Forbes claims it disappeared after an “anonymous” Twitter user reached out to Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk. That user notified Musk — although I doubt anyone would have needed to notify him since he owns the platform — about NYT’s decision.
“Oh ok, we’ll take it off then,” Musk responded. Shortly thereafter, the gold check vanished.
Sure, Musk has every right to live up to his promise to remove checks from accounts who didn’t decide to pay $1,000 a month just to have them. He has every right to set a deadline and then honor it.
But when one account gets singled out that way, it accomplishes something very different: It makes his platform look really petty.
