Elon Musk Calls New York Times ‘Hypocritical’ For Selling Subscriptions But Refusing To Pay For Twitter

Elon Musk calls it the New York Times “hypocritical” on Sunday over the newspaper’s decision not to buy a Twitter Blue subscription while charging subscriptions for its own content. Of course, subscribers to The Guardian are not charged for subscriptions. New York Times get access to thousands of the paper’s articles, while a subscription to Twitter Blue gets you a blue check mark that doesn’t actually do anything since anyone can buy one for $8.

“NY Times is being incredible hypocritical here, as they are super aggressive about forcing everyone to pay *their* subscription,” Musk tweeted Sunday afternoon.

Musk stripping the New York Times of its check mark after calling the newspaper “propaganda” on Saturday. The tweet CEO apparently was upset at reports about the New York TimesThe going rate for organizations and businesses to get a checkmark on the platform is $1,000. According to numerous reports, the cost of the check mark is $8 per month, and adoption is low.

“The real tragedy of @NYTimes is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting,” Musk tweeted on Saturday.

“Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea. It’s unreadable. Their top articles would attract more people. Same applies to all publications,” Musk continued with his colorful language.

After Tony La Russa brought a case against Twitter, the checkmark system for Twitter was created in 2009. It was implemented after an impersonator accounts claimed to be the legendary baseball player. Only notable accounts were allowed to obtain the check mark. Twitter also required identification proof in order to confirm that the person was authentic. Twitter stopped verifying users when Musk took over back in October 2022 and the check mark doesn’t actually signify anything anymore beyond the fact that a person has $8 to spend.

The main account is for New York TimesAlthough the check mark has been removed from this account, all other Times accounts have them as of writing. New York Times Arts, New York Times Games, New York Times MusicAnd New York Times BooksYou can also find other useful information at

On Sunday afternoon, I tried to reach out via Twitter for comments, but received an automated response with the poop emoticon, which you can see in the picture above. Every reporter now receives an automatic response to press queries. Musk reportedly abolished the company’s PR department when he took over last year.