Elon Musk’s X Removes Gold Verification Badge From ‘New York Times’ Amid Israel Misinformation Crisis

Elon Musk’s X has taken away the New York Times' gold verification badge, intensifying Musk's feud with the publication as well as criticism about his platform's safety features.

X introduced a gold checkmarks earlier this year when Musk ordered the company to redo its verification system that had relied on blue checkmarks to identify reputable sources like the Times to users. X, which was formerly known as Twitter, went through several iterations of its new verification system before eventually choosing to give gold checkmarks to news organizations and other brands.

X removed the gold checkmark from the Times' @nytimes account on Tuesday without an explanation, and the platform "continues to provide no information or explanation for any of these moves,” a New York Times Co. spokesperson told The Washington Post on Friday.

Musk has sparred frequently with the Times and its journalists and called for readers to cancel their subscriptions in August when he said the publication "calls for genocide." More broadly, Musk has expressed disdain for much of the media and actively worked to reduce X's reliance on content from news organization.

He has also softened X's content-moderation policies, which has led to a wave of misinformation. Lately, the situation has worsened as the Israel-Hamas war spread onto the internet, and X has been a hot bed of misleading and fake content about the conflict.