New Delhi: Twitter has removed the blue tick from the main profile of the New York Times’ (NYT) after the news organisation said it would not sign up for the social media platform’s new policy of paid-for verification.
According to a new Twitter policy, verified check marks are now offered only through a paid subscription – organisations will have to pay $1,000 a month to get gold check marks while individuals can get blue checks for a starting price of $7 in the United States.
After it lost the verified status, a spokesperson for NYT told Reuters that the company will not pay the monthly fee to the Elon Musk-led platform as the new policy took effect from 1 April.
“We also will not reimburse reporters for Twitter Blue for personal accounts, except in rare instances where this status would be essential for reporting purposes,” the spokesperson added.
Musk’s changes to the verification system has been criticised as it may increase opportunities for imposters to spread disinformation on the platform.
Other publications like The Los Angeles Times, the White House and celebrity basketball player Lebron James have said publicly that they will not pay for the blue tick services.
According to a report, White House director of digital strategy Rob Flaherty told staffers in an email: “It is our understanding that Twitter Blue does not provide person-level verification as a service. Thus, a blue check mark will now simply serve as a verification that the account is a paid user.”
The legacy verification feature – denoted by a blue check mark next to the user’s handle — was launched in 2009, three years after the site.
It was introduced after basketball icon Tony La Russa filed a lawsuit against Twitter over an impersonator. The idea was to definitively prove the identity of the user.
Also read: New York Times says it won’t pay for Twitter verified check mark