Elon Musk removes New York Times' blue check verification, calls outlet 'propaganda'

Twitter CEO Elon Musk removed The New York Times' blue verification check mark, and he called the outlet "propaganda."

One user pointed out to Musk on Sunday that the Times still had a blue check mark even after the social media company had planned to start removing the blue check marks by April 1 if users were not paying $8 a month or organizations were not paying $1,000 a month. 

"Oh ok, we’ll take it off then," Musk replied to the post.

The Times had its blue check mark removed, and Musk tweeted, "The real tragedy of @NYTimes is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting."

He also called the August newspaper's feed "the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It’s unreadable. They would have far more real followers if they only posted their top articles. Same applies to all publications."

Later Sunday, Musk criticized the Times for having a paywall to prevent people who are not subscribed to the outlet from reading its articles.

"NY Times is being incredibl[y] hypocritical here, as they are super aggressive about forcing everyone to pay *their* subscription," he tweeted.

The Times' additional accounts, such as New York Times Books and NYT Magazine, still retained their blue verification badges as of Monday, as do other news outlets including Roll Call.

Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.