Twitter recently suspended its new verification system that allowed anyone to buy a blue tick after the $8 blue tick subscription wiped billions of dollars from many companies’ m-cap. Their official Twitter names have been impersonated to spread disinformation.
The company had launched the Blue service to shut down the fake accounts and increase spammers’ costs. However, numerous accounts posing as political leaders, celebrities and brands soon became a new headache for Twitter management.
Not just Twitter, but big companies around the world are shedding staff to cut costs. According to data from Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks layoffs, up to 1,36,989 employees have been laid off from 849 companies worldwide so far this year. Earlier this month, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, or 13% of its workforce. In October, Microsoft laid off up to 1,000 employees, or 1% of its workforce, in its third round of downsizing. Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, laid off 20% of its workforce to restructure its business.
India in particular, which is one of the largest markets for companies like Google and Meta, among others, has around 23.6 million Twitter users in the country, according to Statista data from January 2022. The only two countries that have more Twitter users than India are the US and Japan with 76.9 million and 58.95 million respectively.
