Twitter CEO Elon Musk mocked The New York Times as “unreadable diarrhea” and took away the publication’s blue checkmark denoting Twitter verification on Sunday morning. Long a coveted symbol of internet importance that was withheld from many patriots under Twitter’s old leadership, the blue check has been egalitarianized by Musk and is now available to all Twitter users, for a small subscription fee of $8.
The de-verification of The New York Times Twitter account comes after an announcement from Twitter CEO Elon Musk that all “legacy verified” accounts, those which received their blue checkmarks before Musk took the helm and before the subscription-based Twitter Blue service was released, will lose their blue checks in the first two weeks of April, should they choose not to subscribe the Twitter Blue, like everyone else with a verified check has had to do.
Twitter Blue costs roughly $8 per month, though the fee can reportedly go up to $11 per month depending on the type of user. While most Twitter users receive a blue check after signing up and being verified, government officials receive grey checks, and some media outlets and businesses receive gold checks, to denote the account’s purpose.
Since Musk took the helm at Twitter and began rolling out Twitter Blue, several corporate media outlets and left-wing political personalities have complained about the payment feature, and are now acting as if they’re taking a principled stand against “fascism” (read free speech) by not subscribing.
The biggest complaint since Musk’s takeover by the affected groups has not been the small Twitter Blue subscription fee, but the re-legalization of speech at odds with their political views on the platform. Increasingly, hardcore leftists are leaving Twitter for Spoutable, a new, similar platform that uses the censorship of conservative views as its number 1 selling point to prospective users.
Musk mocked The New York Times as a “propaganda” media outlet on Sunday morning as he revoked the publication’s Blue Check, tweeting that “the real tragedy of [The New York Times] is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting.”
“Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea,” Musk went on. “It’s unreadable,” he added, before taking a jab at the legion of bot accounts known to follow The New York Times and similar publications or figures.
“They would have far more real followers if they only posted their top articles,” Musk tweeted. “Same applies to all publications.”
