The New York Times’ main Twitter account appeared to lose its blue verification checkmark on Sunday, one of the only high-profile accounts to have the symbol revoked after Twitter’s billionaire owner Elon Musk threatened to take away verification on Saturday from accounts that don’t pay for the company’s Twitter Blue subscription service.
KEY BACKGROUND
Since buying the majority of Twitter last fall, Musk repeatedly threatened to take away verification badges from non-paying users, claiming the old verification system was “corrupt.”
The service could also be designed to help shore up Twitter’s revenue, as Musk contends with a loss of advertisers since his controversial and sometimes-chaotic $44 billion takeover of the company. Through Twitter Blue, participating organizations will need to pay a $1,000 a month subscription fee, and individual users will have to pay $8 a month to maintain their verified status.
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Users who are part of paying organizations can also be verified by being associated with them. The 10,000 most-followed organizations and hundreds of Twitter’s top advertisers will reportedly be exempt from having to pay to keep their verification.
Twitter Blue also provides subscribers a feed with fewer ads and the ability to edit and write longer tweets. But Twitter Blue’s initial pay-for-verification program, launched last year, allowed impersonators to wreak havoc on the site. In response, some organizations were given yellow checkmarks.
CHIEF CRITIC
The New York Times is not the only major media outlet that said it wouldn’t pay for Twitter Blue. The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times also said they wouldn’t pay for verification and won’t allow its journalists to expense the cost of the service, according to BuzzFeed News.
FORBES VALUATION
$202.4 billion. That’s how much Forbes estimates Musk to be worth, mostly due to his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, making him the second-richest person in the world behind LVMH’s Bernard Arnault.
