Twitter is reportedly delaying the rollout of verification examine marks to subscribers because the social community makes an attempt to keep away from attainable affect to Tuesday’s midterm elections.

The Elon Musk-owned social media firm had deliberate to roll out the revamped model of its subscription service, Twitter Blue, on Monday. The agency began testing the brand new options on Saturday, in keeping with an app replace word.

Twitter didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

The reported transfer to delay the rollout of verification badges comes simply days earlier than the U.S. midterm elections, with polls closing on November 8. The New York Occasions experiences that the transfer was aimed toward limiting the potential fallout of verified customers impersonating political or different authorities figures, corresponding to President Biden, or information shops claiming false outcomes which will discourage others from voting.

Jen Easterly, director of CISA, the U.S. authorities company tasked with overseeing election safety and defending voting infrastructure, stated final week that the company had discovered “no info credible or particular about efforts to disrupt or compromise,” however warned of the continuing dangers posed by disinformation campaigns sown by overseas actors aimed toward undermining confidence within the elections system.

Safety specialists like Chris Krebs, the former CISA director who was fired by President Trump for refuting false claims of election fraud, warned that Twitter’s new verification guidelines can be a “main danger” forward of the midterm elections.

On the time of writing, a number of verified customers had been impersonating Elon Musk, Twitter’s new proprietor, regardless of the danger of getting their accounts suspended for impersonation.

The revamped Twitter Blue, which is able to value $7.99 a month within the U.S., features a vary of recent options together with the coveted blue examine mark to anybody who subscribes in addition to cuts down the variety of advertisements served to them on the platform.

Musk is betting on turning the subscription service into a serious income supply for Twitter, which he acquired final month for $44 billion. Musk financed $13 billion for the acquisition from banks and must pay greater than $1 billion a 12 months in curiosity funds.

The corporate started reducing prices earlier this week, shedding roughly half its workforce, or about 3,700 jobs.

In a sequence of tweets earlier this weekend, Musk claimed the corporate’s revamped Twitter Blue “can beat” the ad-revenue YouTube presents to creators, and that he was additionally engaged on fixing the search performance on Twitter.

Twitter can even quickly permit customers to connect long-form texts to tweets, he stated. Twitter plans to roll out the revamped Twitter Blue to subscribers in lots of markets within the coming months. In response to a tweet, Musk stated he was hopeful that Twitter Blue will roll out to customers in India “in lower than a month.”