Elon Musk Yanks New York Times’ Twitter Verified Badge
“NY Times is being incredible hypocritical here, as they are super aggressive about forcing everyone to pay *their* subscription”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk said the old school verification badges would go away unless a person or organization pays for Twitter Blue.
So far, no one has lost their verified badge…except for The New York Times.
Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It’s unreadable.
They would have far more real followers if they only posted their top articles.
Same applies to all publications.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2023
People can pay $8 monthly, and organizations $1,000 for the badge.
The NYT said it would not pay for the badge nor reimburse anyone within the publication who buys it independently.
The best tweet Musk had on the situation is this one:
NY Times is being incredible hypocritical here, as they are super aggressive about forcing everyone to pay *their* subscription
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2023
lol
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2023
It’s true. You get some free articles but must pay for the NYT subscription.
It’s ridiculous.
Here is another great point. It all reminded me of a pay-to-play system. It’s weird how everyone screams equality and treats everyone the same, but when it happens…it’s temper tantrum time.
Credit to Tim Sweeney for realizing this before me https://t.co/92LUkaOEFz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2023
💯
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2023
Oh ok, we’ll take it off then
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2023
The other accounts associated with the NYT have their blue badge. Other outlets also continue to have their badges.
The NYT reporters also have their badges. A few don’t have one, but I don’t know if they had one before April 1.
The left and Democrats cannot stand that Musk isn’t giving them special treatment.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
So, does having the blue badge grant some type of functionality otherwise unobtainable?
Does it prevent somebody from impersonating you or your company?
It allows you to edit your tweet. Otherwise you have to delete it and start over. That’s a biggie, as we all know from LI.
Worth every penny I paid for that feature!
That edit feature is handy, I make too many mistakes.
If LI let me do even that much (delete and repost) it would still be an improvement.
It’s a pretty simple idea. Obviously if you open an account with the name “dathurtz” before anyone else, then nobody else can impersonate you. But what if someone else opened it first? Then you would not be able to open one. So how are people to know whether the “dathurtz” account is you or not? Someone at Twitter calls you at a known phone number, or contacts you in some other known way, ascertains that they are in fact talking to you, and asks whether you are the one with the account. If you confirm it, you get the blue mark. Or they ask you to tweet something, and if you do that proves you have the account and they give you the mark.
At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. In practice it hasn’t always been as foolproof as that.
Makes sense. That’s the value I saw in getting verified. It makes a lot of sense for organizations just so their brand isn’t horribly damaged by some troll.
For an organization the size of NYT, that payment is chump change. A minor cost of doing business. They are obviously angry that they have to pay for a service that used to be free.
I’d say it’s more like they’re butt-hurt that Twitter isn’t a pure communist propaganda platform anymore. If they spew their lies now, they might well be fact-checked, based on real facts.
Yes, if the only word in this equation is “verification”. But the we add “Twitter” in front of that word and it becomes an exclusive club that was open only to those who Twitter approved of.
I believe we will see eventually usage limits and restrictions on unverified accounts. That will force companies and individuals into becoming part of the Twitter income stream.
Aside from already listed, it also puts 2 factor authentication behind Twitter Blue, and the FOR YOU column will only have TB accounts.
The FOR YOU column is pretty worthless, IMO, and the paywalling 2 factor doesn’t really do that much. Good luck trying to brute force my passwords. Welsh is a wonderful language.
Preventing somebody from impersonating you was the ORIGINAL intention of the verification, particularly for businesses.
In practice, the dangerhairs running Twitter turned it into a badge of good standing with leftist politics. They dragged their feet or outright refused to verify huge conservative personalities and business, while blatantly granting the blue badge of honor to TINY accounts as long as they pushed leftist politics.
And of course that’s in addition to the fact they were blatantly selling badges to accounts that didn’t actually meet the alleged standards for getting them.
That’s what this public tantrum is about. The blue check is no longer an ideological tool for the left, and like the children they are, they’re screaming and crying and stamping their feet.
Exactly. That’s why Trump’s Twitter account was (and is again since it was reinstated) @realDonaldTrump to distinguish him from the fakes out there (and there were many even before he ran for president, based on his popularity on the Apprentice and other things).
Ultimately, though, the blue check became a prestige thing, with even some righties puffing up about it (exactly why I never got one). They want to be “special” and “better than” and “experts” blah blah. How pathetic of a human being do you have to be to get any sense of worth at all from pixels on an app? Sad.
I always figured that the people who were “@realMyName” were people who had their actual names already squatted by some imposter before they even got there.
Wait, the NYT is still in business?
This tedious, unoriginal gag isn’t helpful. Try to make an intelligent comment.
Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s pretty funny. And good in the sense that it conveys how few people even read the NYT anymore. It’s a winner in my book. 😛
I saw essentially the same example of profound wit, this time regarding major league baseball, at the Althouse blog today. In neither case was it remotely true. What it means is “Since I don’t like something, it must be extinct, hardy-har-har!”
Wow, I forgot about Althouse. Used to read her quite often (never regularly, but oftenish).
As to your comment, I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s more like a dismissive “the NYT has repeatedly beclowned itself and is thus not worthy of my notice.” That’s what I mean when I make the same joke. And I do. So often. It’s funny. It says so much in so little. It’s almost like a non-visual meme. If you squint. 😉
The only time I ever realize I’m reading the NYT anymore is when I follow a link that stops short in mid sentence and demands I pay tribute before reading further. And the only time I bother to sneak past the tollkeeper (using archive.ph) is when I want a citation to the facts of a (usually long-ago) event to archive. Their opinions are useless to me.
How can you read it without paying the troll under the bridge? When the internet as we know it was young, reliable news sources (and rags like the NYT) were free. Some required free accounts. Now most are paywalled and the free sites are getting worse by the hour.
FoxNews seems more and more like a cross between People Magazine and True Detective. Google news and Yahoo and all the rest of the top-of-mind sources are very slanted in their “reporting”. There are very few places where the average (uninformed? not savvy?) person can get mostly unbiased reporting and facts, as opposed to opinions masked as news.
Thank G-d for Legal Insurrection and other the other “pirate radio stations” of the interwebs. And a pox on the NYT. Feh!
The NYT is a tedious unoriginal gag.
Hee!
Wow, that came from Milhouse. it is a good day.
Good Pesach, Milhouse
It made my day. I hate paywalls. I love crowdsourcing since it gives me the feeling I am part of the solution. Life is too important to take seriously George.
The NY Times is the tedious, unoriginal gag. And a very bad one, too.
Of course. It has a huge subscriber base in NYC and among Progressives nationally. It is small local news media that are driven to extinction.
The depth of commitment to equity seems shallow when it impacts the elite/establishment who lecture the rest of us. Instead they demand special treatment, aka privilege.
Everything the so called elite advocate for is really to bolster their privilege and restrict people they see as their inferiors from enjoying those same perks. They don’t want the masses driving cars, eating decadent food, or traveling to exotic locations because it makes those things less special for them.
To heck with decadent food, they want us eating bugs. Literally. Bugs. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Shudder.
Better than Soylent Green I suppose but still unacceptable.
And the taste varies from person to person.
When I was in Botswana, the locals were absolutely crazy for dried caterpillars (mopane, I think). I let a guy talk me into earing one and it tasted just like a dusty twig.
I know people could get used to anything, but I just don’t care to eat more bugs.
Okay, as long as we are sharing gross bug-eating stories: Long long ago in a country far far away, I ate a fried grasshopper that had then been dipped in chocolate. The chocolate, I think, was to make it seem more yummy to stupid Americans. It didn’t. The crunch and gush of gross were too much for me to handle. Far too much. I will end my tragic tale there (be glad).
No, I will not be eating bugs ever again (unless I am somehow stranded out in the wilds, and there is literally nothing else . . . . because I’ve already gnawed all the bark off the trees and grazed on all the grass. Heh.)
Some of the unaccountably faddish “natural treats” enjoyed in developing countries are consumed not for their flavor but for their high. Perhaps you just didn’t eat enough.
People have been eating chocolate covered ants for decades, if not longer. Supposed to be high in iron, IIRC.
Beats me why anyone reads Izvestia on the Hudson, which prints its views as if news. Izvestia may be good for one thing, lining bird cages, and I’m not even sure about that.
Neurotic narcissists need continuing affirmation. If it’s not self-abuse (by reading the likes of the NY Times regularly) it’s through abusing other people – or nations.
NYT will be judged and labeled by the content of its speech, individually, and as a corporation.
The case of Walter Duranty proves that the NYT will never be judged.
If I were the NYT, I wouldn’t want anyone to know about it either.