A journalist with the news house Mediaite, Rudy Takala, has lost his verified status on Twitter after he reported on President Obama’s abuse of the US government’s surveillance capabilities.
Within an hour of tweeting his column detailing Obama’s allegations on power abuse and spying, Takala lost his blue checkmark on the platform. It’s unclear if the two incidents are related.
“I tweeted this column about the Obama administration spying on journalists at 5:47 Thursday. Around an hour later, my verification badge magically disappeared,” wrote Takala.
The column by Takala was based on the report released by the investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson who ironically is this year publishing a book on censorship.
Takala has not been the only prominent personality to lose their verified status on the platform. Josh Lekach, a podcast host, has also lost his verified status after posting an interview with the Republican candidate Laura Loomer. It is also worth noting that Loomer has filed lawsuits against Big Tech companies for political ideology-based censorship.
“I interviewed Laura Loomer yesterday, and today my Twitter verification badge is gone,” tweeted Lekach.
Twitter removed the verified status of Laura Loomer herself back in 2017 as punishment after Twitter said she doesn’t conform to their new guidelines.
“We are conducting an initial review of verified accounts and will remove verification from accounts whose behavior does not fall within these new guidelines,” Twitter said at the time.
If you have any other examples of Twitter removing the verified status of users, get in touch.
