The badge was removed without notice on Tuesday, a person familiar with the change said. particle for direct object The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, CNN, Bloomberg, wax And other news organizations still had their gold badges as of Thursday afternoon. Times accounts covering world news, health and other topics continue to display verified badges.
The move extends Musk’s efforts to use the social media company he bought under the guise of defending free speech to undermine news organizations he doesn’t like. It also shows that Musk has adopted the kinds of stealthy social media tactics that he and Twitter’s conservative critics once vociferously condemned.
Neither X nor Musk responded to requests for comment.
In April, after Musk bought the company for $44 billion, X ended its years-old system of badges to politicians, journalists and other public figures whose identities it had verified. Its replacement was a pay-per-play scheme that extended blue badges to anyone paying $8 a month and gold badges to anyone. Approved organization That pays at least $1,000 a month.
After The Times refused to pay the fee, Musk tweeted support for its logo to be removed immediately, making The Times the first major account to lose approval. Later in April, X reinstated the badge for The Times and other major accounts, including for those who refused to pay or said they didn’t want it.
Neither the Times nor the Post ever paid the fee, according to people familiar with both organizations.
The changing verification system has made it more challenging for users to search for official or authoritative information during important news events. A study released Thursday by the NewsGuard media rating service found that 74 percent of the worst Israel-Gaza misinformation about X was published by verified Blue Polly accounts.
Musk has repeatedly attacked the Times. Say In August, this news organization supported calls for genocide, and if there was ever a time to cancel this publication, it’s now.
Within days of that post, X had implemented a five-second click delay on the Times website. After The Post reported on the delay, X removed it without explanation to the Times but kept it for other X competitors, including Facebook, Instagram, Substack and Bluesky, according to technical analysis from news outlet The Markup. .
Even without the delay, traffic to the Times website from X links has dropped by almost 50 percent since August, according to a person familiar with the change.
The sharp decline outpaced the slowdown in referrals to top news sites X and Facebook this year, according to industry data from analytics firm Similarweb, first reported by Axios.
On Wednesday, Mask echoed A comment from far-right influencer Ian Miles Cheung, who in March shared a fake manifesto wrongly attributed to a Nashville school shooter, said the Times uncritically retracted the ad and criticism that the mask featured has removed that which makes it possible to express the facts, it has been laughed at. Journalists from fake. musk answered‘Real reporters lmaooo.
The Times runs the 25th most followed account on X, according to data from social media analytics firm Social Blade.
Earlier this month, X removed headlines from news articles and other links on the platform and reduced posts with links in its recommendation system, two moves that a Cardiff University professor told The Post were part of a larger trend to toughen Twitter/X is for news. For organizations to use, Musk said the goal is to maximize the time people spend on X, saying that if people click, less time is spent.
In the months since it bought Mask X, the social media site has reduced content moderation, suspended journalists, reinstated neo-Nazis and threatened to file lawsuits against critics such as the Anti-Defamation League. The platform has also lost users and advertisers.
In April, NPR became the first major news organization to suspend use of the platform after its account was labeled as government-affiliated media. In the six months since, NPRs website traffic has dropped just 1 percent, according to an internal memo first shared by the news magazine Nieman Reports.
Joseph Mann contributed to this report.
#Elon #Musk #Removes #York #Times #Endorsement
Image Source : www.washingtonpost.com