Elon Musk Created More Twitter Chaos By Removing ‘The New York Times’ Checkmark And Making It Difficult To See Who’s Legacy And Who’s Twitter Blue

April Fool’s Day was supposed to be a bloodbath on Twitter: That’s the day Elon Musk had threatened to remove all blue checkmarks that weren’t subscribed to the service’s not very popular for-pay Twitter Blue. That didn’t happen. What did happen was Musk pettily removed the authentication for a newspaper he didn’t like, then he muddied the language for anyone with a checkmark, making it difficult — but not impossible — to tell who’s a legacy account and who is coughing up a monthly fee.

First up, early on Sunday Musk went after The New York Times, removing the blue checkmark to their main account — but not the others tied up with the publication. At the time no other paper had been similarly affected. As per The Washington Post, Musk effectively made an example of NYT because they, like other publications, many celebrities, and even the White House, announced they would not fork over $8 a month to keep their blue checkmark.

On a pissy post dropped in the middle of the night, Musk called NYT “propaganda” that “isn’t even interesting.” He then called their feed the “equivalent of diarrhea” and “unreadable.” He added, “They would have far more real followers if they only posted their top articles. Same applies to all publications.”

Ever since Musk debuted Twitter Blue late last year, it was somewhat easy to tell who was legacy and who was a subscriber: Simply clicking on the checkmark itself told you which one they were.

That brings us to Musk’s second, much more cataclysmic move: Mid-afternoon Sunday, those with legacy accounts noticed that the description on their accounts, which revealed who was legacy and who was Twitter Blue, had been rewritten, so that all bore the same description: “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account.”

Among legacy accounts — and those who care about being able to tell which accounts are legit and which are imposters — the move was not well met. Some dragged Musk. Others made sure to let everyone know they were not paying him to use Twitter.

Others asked who to contact at Twitter to simply remove their checkmark entirely.

Some argued that Musk doesn’t understand that blue checkmark verifications are meant to stop people from falling for impersonation accounts of prominent people, including celebrities and journalists. Or maybe he knows and doesn’t care.

Of course, there are ways to circumvent Musk’s damage.

Surely Musk is not pleased with how few celebrities want to pony up to pay for Musk’s expensive toy.

Anyway, chaos reigns on the service where people used to simply post pictures of cats and food they ate.

(Via Washington Post)