Blue ticks disappear as Musk attacks NY Times

The New York Times has lost its blue tick on Twitter after it said it would not pay to remain verified.

This comes as Twitter starts removing verification badges from accounts which already had a blue tick, after announcing they would be part of a paid subscription from 1 April.

The New York Times, along with several other organizations and celebrities, said they would not pay for the tick.

It prompted Elon Musk to launch a volley of insults at the newspaper, BBC reported.

“The real tragedy of @NYTimes is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting”, Musk, who owns Twitter, wrote on the platform.

“Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It’s unreadable,” he added.

There has been no official comment from Twitter and the New York Times has not responded to Musk’s comments.

Under Twitter’s new rules, blue ticks which once showed official, verified accounts, will start to be removed from accounts which do not pay for it.

Organizations seeking verification badges instead have to pay a monthly fee of $1,000 (£810) to receive a gold verification tick, while individual accounts must pay $8 (£6.40) a month for a blue one.

As well as not paying the subscription fee, the New York Times said it would also not pay for the verification of its journalists’ Twitter accounts, apart from in “rare instances where this status would be essential for reporting purposes”, a spokesperson said.

Following the announcement, the newspaper, which has almost 55 million Twitter followers, lost its verification badge.

But it is unclear whether all organizations must sign up to the subscription service in order to remain verified.

Ten thousand of the most-followed organizations on Twitter will be exempt from the rules, the New York Times reports, citing an internal Twitter document.

Since December, Twitter has introduced three different coloured verification badges. Gold ticks are used for business organizations, grey ticks are for government-affiliated accounts or multilateral organizations, and blue ticks are used for individual accounts which subscribe to Twitter Blue.

Many news organizations including CNN, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post – companies which also said they will not pay for Twitter verification – now have gold ticks.

Other New York Times accounts, such as New York Times Arts and New York Times Travel, also have gold ticks.

The removal of the blue ticks seems to be happening gradually. This could be because it is largely a manual process, according to The Washington Post, citing former employees of the company.