Elon Musk is vengefully killing the New York Times’ verified Twitter brand

In a seemingly petty act of revenge, Elon Musk has stripped himself New York Times of his confirmed chin just hours after he promised to do so in response to the paper’s insistence that it would not pay for the blue badge.

The move comes a day after Twitter was set to begin pulling badges from verified users, with Musk announcing that such “legacy” badges would be phased out in favor of his pay-to-play Twitter Blue scheme.

But on Sunday, there were only “a few dozen” verified accounts, including Timeshad had its verified status revoked, according to a software developer track the activity.

Long one of Musk’s biggest bugbears, it Times is Twitter’s 24th most followed account, having amassed more than 54.9 million followers as of the weekend.

On Thursday, the newspaper was one of several major news organizations to declare that it would not pay for Twitter to keep itself or its journalists verified. The removal of Times‘ confirmed status comes hours after Musk responded to one Jurassic Park meme mocking that announcement.

“Ok ok, we’ll take it off then,” Musk wrote in response.

Less than an hour later, Musk returned to the keyboard to vent. “The real tragedy of the @NYTimes is that their propaganda isn’t even interesting,” he tweeted.

“Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea,” he continued. “It is illegible. They would have far more real followers if they only posted their top articles. The same applies to all publications.”

Other Times-affiliated accounts, including international news, arts and entertainment, technology and business sections, remained verified Sunday, as did many of its individual reporters.

On Sunday, a spokesperson for the paper reiterated that it would not be coughing up a brand.