Elon Musk lashes out at ‘hypocritical’ NY Times for not paying their Twitter subscription

Elon Musk has criticised the The New York Times after the publication made it clear they would refuse to pay for Twitter “verified”.

The Tesla CEO accused the Times of being “hypocritical” over its decision to not pay for its Twitter blue service.

Musk has been critical of the publication in the past, and hit out at the site over the weekend by comparing its feed to “diarrhea”.

“The real tragedy of [The New York Times] is that their propaganda isn't even interesting,” he wrote. “Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It's unreadable.”

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The publication previously confirmed that it would not pay for a verified badge. According to reports, the price of a business on Twitter to be verified with a gold checkmark is $1,000 each month.

Hitting out at the Times, Musk called out its decision to not pay the fee.

“NY Times is being incredible hypocritical here, as they are super aggressive about forcing everyone to pay *their* subscription,” he wrote in a Twitter exchange.

Last Week, Twitter announced that starting April 1, legacy verified users would be losing their blue checkmarks and have to subscribe to Twitter Blue to keep it.

“On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks,” Twitter Verified wrote.

Musk added, “Any individual person’s Twitter account affiliated with a verified organization is automatically verified.”

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The legacy Twitter verification program's departure has been part of Musk’s plan since he acquired Twitter last year.

He said removing legacy verification was “more about treating everyone equally” because “there shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities [in my opinion].”

As part of the new verification system, Musk also said that beginning April 15th, “only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations.”

He said this was the “only realistic way” to prevent “advanced AI bot swarms” from taking over.

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