The pro-Left liberal, ‘The New York Times’, has become the first major news organisation to lose its verification checkmark on Twitter.
The move followed after the outlet said it would not pay the microblogging site a monthly fee to retain its badge. A number of other news publishers have also said they will not pay for verifications.
Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk had said that from April 1, 2023, the company would start removing ‘legacy’ verified checkmarks from accounts that do not subscribe to Twitter Blue, the platform’s subscription service introduced last year.
The system essentially allowed users to buy a verification mark which is often interpreted as being authentic amount and with substantial number of followers.
Individual users must buy a subscription to Twitter’s Blue service, which costs $8 a month, to obtain the badge. Businesses that are currently unverified will have to pay $1,000 a month if they want a gold check mark verifying their account. The micro-blogging site announced that users in India would have to pay Rs 900 per month for a monthly subscription, which would give them the Blue verified badge.
The publisher’s account has more than 55 million followers.
An account shared a meme which said that the publication has announced it will not pay for Twitter Blue, in response to which, Musk tweeted, “Oh ok, we will take it off then”. In another tweet which Musk later deleted, he said that there would be a “grace” period of a few weeks before the non-paying checks were removed. Of course, he maintained the consideration will be allowed “unless they tell they won’t pay now.”
“We aren’t planning to pay the monthly fee for check mark status for our institutional Twitter accounts,” New York Times said in its statement. “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 New York Times may not be the only publisher globally that has announced not paying for Twitter’s verification. The Washington Post, CNN, and the Los Angeles Times are among the major publishers that have decided the same. It may be pointed out that even the US White House will not pay to have its staff’s official Twitter profiles verified. Some celebrities also said they would not pay for Twitter verification.
The Washington Post said it “will not pay for Twitter Blue service as an institution or on behalf of our journalists” because “it’s evident that verified checkmarks no longer represent authority and expertise”.
At Los Angeles Times, an internal memo said that the company wasn’t planning to pay for Twitter Blue subscriptions for staff for the time being.
Last week, Twitter released a part of its platform’s code, which according to some researchers, revealed prioritised content posted by Twitter Blue users. This means that individuals who choose not to pay for Twitter Blue could become less visible on the site.
It may also become harder for most users to tell real people from fake accounts.
It is true the micro-blogging site changed the way the new tech-savvy world would communicate.
Controversies ruled the roost in the recent past, and there have been a few glaring instances in India.
On February 11, 2019, in a major decision seeking to ‘keep a track on the functioning of the popular micro blogging site Twitter’, the company executive was disallowed from making an appearance before the 31-member Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT in New Delhi.
“Twitter has sought to insult the Indian parliament by deputing a junior executive and so she was not allowed to depose before the panel,” a senior lawmaker had told this journalist then.
After Twitter introduced a new system where it “edited” the content and also decided who will be followers and so on, the BJP leaders alleged that Twitter had started functioning like a media house.
“It is no longer a technology enabler platform, and hence rules applied to media houses, especially in the context of FDI may apply to them,” a committee member had said.
In fact, Twitter, in earlier avatars, had fought with the US Congress and also legislature bodies of Singapore and European Union. Donald Trump was banned from the platform under the previous owner.
In India, Delhi police even conducted raids on Twitter offices.
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