Elon Musk removes New York Times' Twitter verified badge 

Twitter CEO Elon Musk removed The New York Times’ verified mark on the social media platform on Sunday after it refused to pay for Twitter’s paid subscription.

On March 23, Musk announced that users who wanted to keep their verification had until April 1 to pay the new fees to keep their status or would lose their blue check mark on the platform. The new subscription fees require individuals to pay $8 a month and organizations $1,000 a month to continue to be verified. 

Elon Musk announced that one of the first organizations to lose their verified status on Twitter because it refused to pay a subscription was the New York Times. 

"The real tragedy of @NYTimes is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting," Musk tweeted along with the announcement. 

"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. The same applies to all publications," Musk posted in a follow-up tweet.

The move comes after the New York Times published an article on Friday saying it would not pay for its verified status on the platform and it would not reimburse its journalists who wanted to keep their status. 

"The New York Times, which has nearly 55 million followers on Twitter, said on Thursday that it would not pay for the verified badge for its institutional accounts, including @nytimes. The Times also told its journalists that it would not reimburse them for a Twitter Blue subscription, except in rare cases when it was necessary for reporting," the article stated.

Elon Musk responded to the article with a tweet saying that the publication was being “hypocritical” because it is “ super aggressive about forcing everyone to pay *their* subscription."

As of Sunday, the New York times’ side accounts, such as the New York Times Opinion, NYT Climate, and New York Times World, continued to have their blue badges, as well as many of the reporters for the organization.