The New York Times’ blue tick on Twitter was removed after it declared it would not pay to maintain verification.
Twitter announced on March 31 that all accounts would require a paid subscription starting on April 1 and has already begun removing verification badges from accounts that already have a blue tick.
Together with a number of other organisations and famous people, The New York Times declared they would not purchase the tick.
Elon Musk responded by hurling a barrage of jabs at the publication.
The real tragedy of the New York Times, according to Mr. Musk, owner of Twitter, “is that their propaganda isn’t even fascinating.”
Also, he continued, “their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhoea; it’s unreadable.”
The New York Times and Twitter have not yet made any public comments in response to Mr. Musk’s remarks.
According to Twitter’s new policies, accounts that do not pay for it will start to lose the blue ticks that formerly indicated authentic, verified accounts.
Individual accounts must pay $8 (£6.40) per month for a blue verification tick, while organisations seeking verification badges must pay $1,000 (£810) each month to acquire a gold one.
Twitter will make money from the subscription service, but there have been worries raised that it will be impossible to distinguish between real accounts and impersonators without the verification process.
Apart from “few circumstances where this status would be needed for reporting purposes,” a spokesman said, the New York Times stated it would not pay for the authentication of its journalists’ Twitter accounts.
The newspaper, which has over 55 million followers on Twitter, lost its verification symbol after the statement.
Yet, it’s not obvious if all organisations need to subscribe to the programme in order to keep their verification.
The New York Times writes, citing an internal Twitter memo, that 10,000 of the most popular Twitter accounts will be excluded from the limits.
Since December, Twitter has added three separate coloured verification badges: blue ticks are used for individual accounts, grey ticks are used for multilateral organisations or accounts linked with the government, and gold ticks are used for business organisations.
There are currently several news organisations with gold ticks, such as CNN, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, all of which have stated they will not pay for Twitter verification.
The gold badge is also present on other New York Times accounts, including New York Times Arts and New York Times Travel.
The blue ticks appear to be being eliminated gradually. The Washington Post, citing former firm employees, speculates that this may be because the procedure is primarily manual.
Celebrities like American basketball legend LeBron James still have a blue tick after declaring he would not pay for Twitter verification. The American rapper Ice-T has voiced similar criticism of the new fee-paying scheme.
