Elon Musk's Twitter Blue Verification Move Costs New York Times its Gold Tick

Twitter has removed the gold "verified" marker from the New York Times' main account, following an initiative by CEO Elon Musk to open up verification for paying subscribers. This move comes as part of his new subscription service called 'Twitter Blue'. The news organization will now have to pay a monthly fee of $1,000 in order to retain the gold tick under this system.

It was last year when Elon Musk took over the microblogging platform and announced that he would be opening up "blue checkmark" verification to paying subscribers. As of April 1st, 2023, legacy blue checkmarks have started winding down. This has affected some news media companies, firms, and charities who are no longer tagged as verified accounts with a gold tick unless they pay a substantial amount every month. This is not limited to just the New York Times but applies to all similar accounts on Twitter that wish to remain verified with a gold tick.

The idea behind this move by Tesla's CEO is that it creates more trustworthiness among users and helps prevent impersonation or malicious activities on social media platforms such as Twitter. On Sunday, he further blasted the news organization as 'propaganda', which could be one reason why their gold tick was taken away so suddenly after his latest announcement about subscription fees being applicable for blue-check verifications.

Twitter has always had its own policies in place when it comes to verifying accounts and uses various criteria, including profile completeness along with public interest factors, such as having an active account for at least six months before applying for verification status. All these factors are taken into consideration before granting any account with blue or gold ticks of authentication.

Conclusion

Although there may still be some uncertainty regarding how long each verification status will last and what criteria must be met in order for them to remain valid, what we can take away from all this is that Twitter's policy towards authentication remains intact despite any changes or initiatives introduced by its current leadership team. The possibility exists that if other organizations follow suit soon enough, then maybe more people would come forward in support of paid verifications considering how much trustworthiness it brings along.