Musk Skewered For Demanding Payment For Blue Ticks

Elon Musk has scrubbed the main New York Times Twitter account for not paying the $8 he demanded for subscribers to secure the blue checks or verification marks or else they lose the service, David Meyer reported for Fortune’s Data Sheet.

Photo Insert: Users clicking on blue checks to see what they mean are now told that the badge could mean the user is a legacy check-holder, or that they’ve paid for Twitter Blue—as for which, that’s anyone’s guess.

Musk claimed the Times was being “incredible hypocritical” because it enforces a paywall, which would be a more coherent argument if the paper were trying to get readers to pay or else the newspaper would not publish articles.

This may seem like yet another example of Musk failing to make good on a promise, but it’s not necessarily that.

Twitter was clear that it would only begin removing “legacy verified checkmarks” on Saturday, which may have something to do with the fact—reported by the Washington Post a few days ago—that the process is largely manual and impossible to execute in bulk.

However, if Twitter is following through, it’s doing so in a typically chaotic fashion. Users clicking on blue checks to see what they mean are now told that the badge could mean the user is a legacy check-holder, or that they’ve paid for Twitter Blue—as for which, that’s anyone’s guess.

Because Twitter Blue doesn’t involve any real identity verification and the legacy system did, this is a gift for impersonators who can shell out Musk’s $8 safe in the knowledge that even mildly skeptical people might still think they’re the real deal.

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