Elon Musk takes away The New York Times’ blue checkmark, apparently out of spite
The New York Times announced last week that it wasn't going to be paying for Twitter Blue, so Elon Musk removed their checkmark
Aux News Elon Musk
The state of Twitter for the last few months has been nothing short of a dumpster fire, with new policies being instituted (before almost immediately being undone), messy company-wide layoffs, and code so glitchy that getting videos to load properly is increasingly rare. Even so, the day had finally come for one of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s most hated newer policies to come into effect: removing the free verified checkmarks from accounts. Yet, while most companies and public figures still held onto their verified blue checks past the April 1st deadline, The New York Times’ main account wasn’t quite as lucky.
Per NBC News, The New York Times’ account (which currently has about 55 million followers) lost its official blue checkmark on Sunday, following the news publication’s announcement last week that they wouldn’t pay the $1000 per month business fee for the new verification process. Things seemed to get expedited though when Musk was informed by a Twitter user of the company’s plans.
“Oh ok, we’ll take it off then,” replied the Tesla CEO via his Twitter on Sunday.
That wasn’t the end of the situation, though, as Musk eventually sent out tweets not too long after voicing his disdain of The New York Times, including calling their reporting “propaganda” and writing that their Twitter feed is the “equivalent of diarrhea.”
“They would have far more real followers if they only posted their top articles,” wrote Musk in one of his tweets. “Same applies to all publications.”
While this whole process seems to be a push by Musk for more users to pay up with a subscription to Twitter Blue, it doesn’t seem like the site has even implemented the policy fully, with some of The New York Times’ other accounts like NYTimes Tech and NYT Photo still holding onto their verified status. Even so, most users on the site have been pretty blasé about losing their pre-Musk checkmarks. Talk of the new policy even reached the premiere of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, where true man-of-the-people Jack Black made it wouldn’t be partaking in any of the purchased checkmark shenanigans.
“I’m a little embarrassed by the blue check, to be honest with you,” Black told Variety. “Maybe it’s cooler not to have checks. It’s definitely not cool to pay for it.”
61 Comments
Elon Musk, seen here showing that he doesn’t know how to do a proper Vulcan salute.
“Long liver and prostate!”
Gee, of all the things Jack Black has to be embarrassed about.
name them. we’ll wait.
I was gonna defend Jack Black but then I remember Guliver’s Travels
Congratulations on being the one person who does.
I’ve been heavy drinking for over a decade to forget. Has not worked
this sums up how bad elon is at this shit:
Imagine being Lebron James and not paying $96 for a blue check mark.
He also:A. removed the text above a tweet telling you who retweeted it, so now your feed looks like a bunch of people you’re not even followingB. Replaced the bird with the Dodge meme because…he’s a petty idiot.
I’ve been hearing people say that the Doge thing may actually be what broke the “…. retweeted” function and while that may just be supposition I kinda want it to be true.
Take it for what it’s worth, but the Doge thing also might be a “I’m being sued over DogeCoin! How I can bury this story? Ah, I know!” move.
How is slapping the Doge icon all over Twitter going to make people forget about it?
Is Twitter *actually* a dumpster fire these days, or does AV Club just wish it was? I am only a very casual Twitter user, but it seems like they’ve been getting more attention than ever and there appears to be a lot more activity there since Space Karen took over.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes, but it always was a trash fire. It’s just now due more to imbecilic mismanagement than to the organic heaping of endless burning refuse by its user base.
Thank you for the reply – I agree with your characterization. My daughter wanted to join and I told her not to – “It’s like the YouTube comments section but without videos.”
Look man, back then, it was OUR dumpster fire. We didn’t need CORPORATE to light those oily rags ablaze. We damn well did it ourselves.
Seize the Means of Dumpster Fire Production!
Oily rags also have a tendency of spontaneously combusting when exposed to air for prolonged periods. That’s why you always gotta remember to dispose of them in a covered receptacle.
(This comment was brought to you by my middle school shop class.)
I always found it borderline unusable but was able to make some really useful out of it with Tweetdeck. Then Musk turned off the API and I’m seeing once again how much of a dumpster fire it still is.
I’ve only been there a few times and I will say the ratio of real tweets to ads in my feed havegone up so high that it almost looks like a parody sight making fun of uncontrolled capitalism.
Every site that makes its livin’ off of scraping the content generated by other sites dumps on those sites so the readers don’t cut out the middleman and go straight to the source. I mean, AVC said it hates twitter, but look how many articles it’s done that are just a few sentences snarked-up in between embedded tweets.
Yes it’s become a massive dumpster fire because the guy in charge of it has no interest in moderating disinformation or hateful content while the previous regime at least pretended to try.Meanwhile, he’s bleeding advertisers but still adding more ways their content gets forced in to timelines. So now you get all kinds of Crypto and Psuedo-Medicine pumped in to your feed (including when reading replies)
By attention, do you mean “OMFG, what is that ‘super genius disruptor’ doing now? Will he literally shit on the floor to gain more attention for this dumpster fire he has single handedly created through his own hubris and Saudi money?” Too many issues to list, but the hindenburg also garnered attention in it’s last act.
It was but it is also, somehow, worse since he took over. The site’s now way less stable and has weird things flicking off for no reason. Also he reinstated Graham Linehan’s account.
The AVC, and the majority of the commentariat, haaaaates Elon.
Oh Jeeeeezus, why do so many people care? Other than celebrities, I suppose, but the average person? Use Twitter, or not. Anyone that doesn’t like something that is free, well, don’t use it. I AM OUT!
The New York Times could just stop using twitter. Don’t even make a show of it. Just stop using it.
Everyone should do this. Make the world a better place. Piss off Elon ‘apartheid profiteer’ Musk. Everybody wins 🙂
Except Musk.
That’s the best part!
I kinda hoped that would happen when he first bought it but to many people are addicted to that stupid app.
There are worse options.[refreshes kinja]
It’s sad how people like him think this looks like the behaviour of a strong person.
It’s sad how people like him think this looks like the behavior of an adult.
He’s the patron saint of neckbeards. He gives them hope.
Here he is, a weird, unpleasant dweeb who, when he wheels out an awkward reference that doesn’t land properly or says some weird unworkable nerd shit like “We’re all gonna live on Mars!” or calls someone a “pedo” he gets praised, instead of having people go “Ew, get away from me, creep.”
It’s like how trump behaves in the way poor people think rich people act. musk behaves the way weak people think powerful people act.
I’m sure the Times has regular meetings dedicated solely to figuring out how to get more Twitter followers.
That Grimes ever fucked this sucker of Satan’s cock has made me lose all respect for her.
lol twitter should officially been shut down the moment he became the most-followed account after telling his engineers to shove his tweets in everyone’s faces, i never thought we would see a more pathetically insecure bitch boy than donald trump but here we are
What motivation does he have for anything, other than spite or being sick baked bruh?
There’s also his hatred of trans people.
Elon showing how utterly powerless he’s become by taking away something the Times already said they don’t value, which every other publication is about to lose anyway since none of them want to pay for it either.
Government organizations are also shrugging at the idea of paying for the checkmark. This would probably increase the likelihood of scammers impersonating organizations, but it’s ridiculous for Twitter to expect people to pay them to solve a problem that Twitter created (and was subscription-free for a very long time, with little effort required on Twitter’s part). Hopefully the large number of companies and organizations ignoring the paid verification program will result in him walking things back or the continued abandonment of the platform entirely.
This would probably increase the likelihood of scammers impersonating organizationsExcept Twitter Blue has already killed people’s faith in it as a news source (which is why it’s losing advertisers at lightning speed).Look at the change he made this week even. The Twitter Blue bullshit was such a joke that anyone who subbed to it was mocked. Twitter Blue status became such a scarlet letter Musk pushed out a change that stopped letting people tap it to check if it was “legacy” or “Blue.”When he originally annouced the end of “legacy” verified status, people immediately vowed to block EVERY user with a blue check, since it would immediately ID them as a Blue subscriber and fuck those guys.
The right’s whole obsession with blue checks is because they have always viewed them as a status symbol instead of a quick visual VERIFICATION that the person tweeting is who they say they are.With that removed (especially now that there’s nothing differentiating “legacy” and Blue subscribers) the check has NO value.Hell, we’ve already been through this nonsense when he first rolled out Blue and multiple companies saw their stocks tank because people thought insulin was gonna be free.
What Jack Black should have said is: “Of course I’m going to have a blue checkmark. It’ll be proudly displayed on the account I just started, @theRealAdamSandler.”
They should just get one of the 8 dollar ones and retweet their own articles with that. Once it’s popular enough they can switch the name back around and stop paying.
I’m good with them not paying Twitter anything, thanks.
Yeah, that’s also a good option.
I mean, I don’t think it needs to be said but Elon is a fucking nut.
Musk has a lot of experience “paying for it” so he is just passing on his wisdom
The NYT is garbage propaganda and always has been.Musk belongs in a labor camp for life.This is where some idiot liberal calls me a centrist.
Talk of the new policy even reached the premiere of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, where true man-of-the-people Jack Black made it wouldn’t be partaking in any of the purchased checkmark shenanigans.That sentence is badly garbled.
I’m pretty sure Musk does everything out of spite, even basic bodily functions. The man thermoregulates out of spite.
Musk calling anyone’s twitter feed “diarrhea” is the height of projection. The guy spends all day long talking shit. I dunno how he finds enough time to even pretend to run Tesla or SpaceX. He just tweets bad ideas and then his lackeys have to scramble to implement them or else get fired.
considering how much the nyt has been bashing trans people lately you’d think elon would love them
My heart goes out to whatever skeleton dev crew they’ve got left at Twitter who are likely getting paged at all ours of the night because Musk got a wild hair up his ass and wanted this done.
It sounds like his advice to Twitter users is to post… less?
You guys still reporting on this asshat…?
This is how it will work. Companies / people won’t pay for the blue check. Twitter will become even more of a cesspool. Since no one will be “verified” we’ll all just assume a post is fake and stop going to twitter and if I want to see what the NYTimes is posting, I’ll just go read the NYtimes. Twitter is not the information hub of the world musk thinks it is.