UNITED STATES: The blue tick has been removed from The New York Times on Twitter after it revealed that its verification payments would not be entertained. Verification badges were removed by Twitter from accounts with blue ticks after the new paid subscription announcement that was to commence on April 1.
The paper with 55 million Twitter followers lost its verification badge after the announcement.
A lot of organisations and celebrities, including The New York Times, stated that they were not willing to pay for the tick that irked Elon Musk, who aggressively attacked the newspaper.
Musk said on Twitter, a platform that he owns, he writes, “The real tragedy of @NYTimes is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting,” adding, “Also, their feed in the Twitter is equivalent of diarrhoea.” It’s unreadable.”
Three different coloured verification badges have been implemented by Twitter: gold for business organisations that would need them, grey for government-related pages, and blue for personal accounts that would need them.
Both Twitter and the New York Times have not responded to Musk’s comments yet. Organisations seeking verification badges are deemed to pay $1,000 to get a gold verification tick. Blue Tick clients seeking individual accounts would have to pay $8 per month.
This would essentially augment Twitter’s revenue pool. There have been a lot of frights as the verification process would actually differentiate between the genuine and the fake accounts.
The New York Times mentioned that, aside from “rare instances where this status would be essential for reporting purposes,” it will refrain from paying for the journalists’ Twitter accounts for verification, as reported by a spokesperson.
There, however, has been a dearth of transparency in understanding whether subscription signup services are mandatory for all organisations.
NY Times states after citing an internal Twitter document that a lot of the most popular organisations on Twitter would not have to cater to the rule.
Both New York Times Arts and New York Times Travel, however, have gold badge subscriptions.
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