Twitter to postpone ‘check mark’ regulation after US elections

Twitter administration has decided to reveal its blue tick after US midterm elections, New York Times says, to avoid a potential election interference.

Twitter has updated its app in Apple's App Store to begin charging $8 for blue check verification marks.
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Twitter has updated its app in Apple's App Store to begin charging $8 for blue check verification marks.

Twitter is delaying the rollout of verification check marks to subscribers of its new $8 a month service until after Tuesday's midterm elections, a report said.

According to a New York Times report, in an internal chat, an employee asked why Twitter was “making such a risky change before elections, which has the potential of causing election interference.”

The US midterm elections on Tuesday will decide whether Republicans or Democrats will control Congress.

“We’ve made the decision to move the launch of this release to Nov 9, after the election,” a manager working on the blue check mark project said on Sunday, the report said.

Changes to Twitter's verification process came a week after Elon Musk took over 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.

Twitter recently laid off 50 percent of its employees, including employees on the trust and safety team, the company's head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth said in a tweet earlier this week.

Reuters reported on Thursday that Musk has directed Twitter's teams to find up to $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings.

READ MORE: Users of Musk's Twitter can soon get blue check for $8 monthly fee

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Twitter recalls some employees back

After Twitter Inc laid off roughly half its staff on Friday following Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition, the company is now reaching out to dozens of employees who lost their jobs and asking them to return, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.

Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake. Others were let go before management realised that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, the report said citing people familiar with the moves.

Tweets by staff of the social media company said teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights and machine learning ethics were among those gutted, as were some product and engineering teams.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday's reports.

READ MORE: Will Twitter layoffs fuel misinformation before the US midterms?

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