Musk Yoinks NYT’s Gold Check threatens two subscription tiers
In his ongoing effort to make a dying platform profitable, Elon Musk introduced two subscription tiers for X: formerly known as Twitter. At the same time, Musk continues his vendetta against news publishers by stripping the official New York Times report of its content Gold verification checkmarkas first discovered by The Washington Post reported Thursday.
“Two new tiers of X-Premium subscriptions are launching soon,” Musk said tweeted early today. The cheaper tier will have the same amount of ads but give users full access to the platform, while the more expensive option will have no ads, says the X owner.
The message comes right after the news that X has started testing a $1 subscription this week for new accounts in New Zealand and the Philippines. Musk claims the subscription tiers are an attempt to combat bots and spam in the app, but they are also undoubtedly another source of revenue for the platform. which caused bleeding for both users And Advertisers since Musk took over last fall.
As for Musk and the New York Times, a spokesperson for the newspaper confirmed to Gizmodo via phone call that the paper’s gold check mark was removed on Tuesday. The spokesman said the Times received no explanation from Instead, a blue check mark appeared on the Times’ X-profile on Friday.
X did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment on the decision or subscription levels.
Musk apparently had a falling out with The New York Times, as the platform originally removed the magazine’s blue check mark in April after refusing to pay the exorbitant price for verification reported from Bloomberg. X also shadowbanned the Times in August when it was revealed that lThe ink supply to the outlet was throttled ever so slightly compared to other news websites. More broadly, however, Musk is on a crusade against news outlets as a whole –X recently decapitated headlines on the platformby relying on users to manually enter accurate information into tweets themselves.
