Twitter Said to Delay Changes to Check Mark Badges Until After Midterms

A manager working on the verification badge project responded on Sunday that “we’ve made the decision to move the launch of this release to Nov. 9, after the election.”

Twitter, whose communications team has been almost entirely laid off, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nov. 9 is the day immediately following Tuesday’s election, and many races may still be undecided as votes are tallied.

Charging for the verification check mark program had been one of the changes made by Elon Musk, who took over Twitter late last month in a $44 billion buyout. The billionaire is under financial pressure from the deal, which he partly financed with $13 billion in debt. Twitter has long been unprofitable and, like other social media companies, it faces a weakening in digital advertising spending as the global economy tips toward a recession.

On Friday, Mr. Musk laid off roughly half of Twitter’s employees, or about 3,700 jobs. He said at the time that he had no choice but to make the cuts because the company was losing $4 million a day.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/06/technology/twitter-verification-check-marks.html