The New York Times lost its Twitter verification badge this weekend.
The “Gray Lady,” as the newspaper is known, appears to be among the first accounts to lose its verified status as the social media platform turns to a paid-subscription model.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk chastised The New York Times in a pair of tweets overnight.
“The real tragedy of @NYTimes is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting,” he said, tagging the newspaper’s Twitter handle.
“Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea,” Musk added. “It’s unreadable. They would have far more real followers if they only posted their top articles. Same applies to all publications.”
Twitter said April 1 would be the date it would begin to wind down its legacy verified program and remove verified checkmarks.
Twitter still gives users the option to keep or obtain a verification badge by paying $8 a month for a Blue subscription. Musk has suggested that paid subscriptions would help Twitter combat bots and trolls as well as help the social media platform pay its bills.
Twitter did share a link for organizations to sign up for “Verified Organizations,” but a New York Times spokesperson told The Daily Wire that the newspaper is not planning to pay a monthly fee for verified status on its institutional accounts.
“We also will not reimburse reporters for Twitter Blue for personal accounts, except in rare instances where this status would be essential for reporting purposes,” the New York Times spokesperson added.
