Musk revokes NYT's Twitter badge after news org refused to pay $1K a month

After a weekend where many Twitter users waited to witness the moment when their legacy verified badges disappeared, the official Twitter handle of The New York Times became one of the first accounts to lose its verified status. While many legacy accounts still have their badges, the speedy removal of the badge from one of the platform's most influential organizations was seemingly personally directed by Elon Musk, The Washington Post reported.

In response to a meme joking about the Times' decision not to pay $1,000 a month to keep the gold check mark that Twitter sells to verify businesses, Musk tweeted on Saturday, "Oh ok, we'll take it off then." On Sunday, Musk deleted a tweet that said legacy verified accounts would be given "a few weeks grace" before the check marks vanish "unless they tell they won't pay now, in which we will remove it."

Making an example out of revoking the Times' verified status seemed personal to Musk. In several tweets, Musk mocked the Times--which the Post noted is Twitter's 24th-most-followed account--calling its news articles "propaganda" that "isn't even interesting" and describing its Twitter feed as "diarrhea" that's "unreadable." He also tweeted that the Times was being "hypocritical" because the news organization is "super aggressive about forcing everyone to pay their subscription" fees. (Two years ago, the Times increased its digital subscription price for the first time, CNN reported, raising it to $17 a month.)

Of course, The New York Times wasn't the only news organization to publicly dismiss the value of paying for a verification badge that ensures tweets appear in Twitter's main timeline, the "For You" tab. The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post also confirmed they wouldn't be subscribing, but both accounts still have gold check marks as of this story's publication.

Before the Times lost its badge, many expected that the news organization would be among the 10,000 most-followed organizations and the top 500 advertisers that Twitter would view as exceptions and not require a subscription to keep their accounts' verified status. Last week, the Times reported that it reviewed a Twitter internal document outlining that plan. It's unclear if the plan has been ditched or the Times lost eligibility as an exception by publicly rejecting Musk's business plan.

Twitter has said that charging a fee to become verified allows businesses and government organizations to avoid impersonation on the platform. Once an organization is approved, the organization then becomes solely responsible for vetting any accounts linked to the organization and marking those accounts with branded affiliate badges.

"Rather than relying on Twitter to be the sole arbiter of truth for which accounts should be verified, vetted organizations that sign up for Verified Organizations are in full control of vetting and verifying accounts they're affiliated with," a company tweet said.

While the official New York Times account won't pay to bear a badge, the Times reported that it would consider paying for Twitter Blue badges for journalists in rare circumstances "when it was necessary for reporting."

For news organizations, the value of being on Twitter isn't in generating traffic but in reaching avid news consumers on the platform. By refusing to subscribe, news organizations could see their engagement on the platform suffer, as Twitter stops recommending their tweets in the "For You" tab.

The New York Times--which has 55 million followers--likely expects that losing verified status may not put a huge dent in overall engagement. Smaller news organizations would likely suffer more but also may not have the budget to invest $1,000 monthly just to ensure their tweets are promoted beyond their followers. For those organizations and other small businesses, the investment in verification would likely be viewed as an advertising expense, The New York Times reported.