New Delhi: The rollout of the much-debated Twitter blue verification badge that was announced by the new owner of the company, Elon Musk, will be delayed until after Tuesday's midterm elections.
The new service costing $8 a month will be delayed until the US midterm elections on Tuesday which will decide whether Republicans or President Joe Biden's Democrats will control Congress, reported the New York Times on Sunday, according to news agency Reuters.
The overhaul to Twitter's verification process comes amid Tesla chief Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media company in a $44 billion deal. On Saturday, Twitter updated its app in Apple's App Store to begin charging $8 for blue check verification marks.
The company shared a new update to the Twitter app saying the paid verification system was now a feature of the website’s subscription service, Twitter Blue.
So far, verification was limited to companies, politicians, celebrities, and other public figures, including members of the media.
Both users and employees within the company raised concerns over the implementation of the new “pay-for-play” system may cause confusion as anyone paying the subscription fee could acquire a verified badge pretending to be a public figure, institution, or news outlet and spread false information about results of Tuesday’s vote, as per the New York Times report, quoted the Independent.
In fact, Twitter employees in an internal discussion through Slack posed questions as to why the company was “making such a risky change before elections, which has the potential of causing election interference,” as per the report.
A manager responded that the project was being delayed and the launch of the new release postponed until 9 November, the day after the midterm elections.
Twitter also fired 50 per cent of its employees, including employees on the trust and safety team, the company's head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth. The world’s billionaire entrepreneur also directed teams to find up to $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings, reported Reuters.
Since his $44bn takeover last week, Musk has dissolved the company’s board, sacked its CEO, Parag Agrawal, along with senior managers, and began mass layoffs on Friday.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Saturday defended his decision of laying off employees from Twitter and said that there was no choice as the microblogging site is losing over $4 million a day.