Twitter had vowed to remove “legacy” verified checkmarks on accounts on Saturday, April 1st. For the most part, that has failed to happen. But Twitter owner Elon Musk did appear to revel in the fact that The New York Times had been stripped of its verification.
The Times lost its verified checkmark, and immediately imposters began attempting to appear as the news outlet on the social media platform.
The publication has a following of over 55 million on the platform, but in a series of tweets, Musk claimed that the “tragedy” of the account “is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting”.
He later called the Twitter feed from the company “the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It’s unreadable”.
Like most media entities, The New York Times claimed it would not pay to retain its verified badge, and would not reimburse employees who subscribed to Twitter Blue to keep their checkmarks either. The NYT Books and NYT Food accounts continue to bear a gold symbol, which claims “This account is verified because it’s an official organization on Twitter.”
A noticeable change for Twitter is the way blue checkmarks are now described. While clicking on the actual badge, a pop-up window now reads “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account.”
Previously, there was a delineation between whether a user was a legacy verified account or if it was simply subscribed to Twitter Blue.
As of this publication, The New York Times appears to be the only major media entity to have been stripped of its Twitter verification.
