NBC senior reporter Ben Collins, who covers disinformation, joined anchor Yasmin Vossoughian on MSNBC Friday morning and sounded the alarm on how potential changes at Twitter could negatively impact the U.S. midterm elections.

“I know that you’ve been talking to a lot of folks employed by Twitter. What are they telling you? What is the separation also look like? The details of that,” asked Vossoughian, referring to the sudden widespread layoffs at Twitter.

“Sure. So the most important thing that Twitter employees want to stress is that the company is a nightmare right now and that you cannot work there. And the website is built on sticks and it might fall apart. It’s a house of cards,” Collins responded, adding:

If it falls apart by Tuesday? We’re in trouble in terms of getting election information out there. The other thing they’re warning to me about, by the way, to regular people like you, this is the thing. These people have lost their jobs and this is what they’re worried about right now.

On Tuesday. On Monday. On Monday. Sorry. On Monday. On Monday, anybody can maybe buy a verification badge. Right. Right. Yeah. You could go and pose as anybody an election official, a public figure, whatever. And they’ve cut the moderation staff so severely that there’s no way they’re going to catch up in time for these lies.

“Wow,” noted Vossoughian.

“So using Twitter as a trustworthy source of information on Tuesday is going to be a nightmare. That’s what people inside of Twitter or people who just got laid off, some people who are still there are warning about because they go and talk to Elon, who is deeply out of his depth, objectively, and they don’t know what’s going to happen next week during the United States elections,” Collins concluded, offering a stark warning.

“So who is the person? What is the entity that helps identify that Twitter will no longer be a viable source that we have looked to for so long going forward? Because we are in the age of misinformation. I mean, the timing could not be worse for all this stuff,” Vossoughian followed up.

“The entity is us,” replied Collins, adding:

We’re going to learn the hard way on Tuesday. If he does this by Monday and he wants to, he’s he says he wants to ship this product by Monday. This is a way to get $8 and a lot to users. We’re going to see what happens. I don’t mean to sound the alarm quite so severely here, but this could be really bad.

Watch the full clip above via MSNBC

The post ‘This Could Be Really Bad’: Ben Collins Sounds the Alarm on What Happens If Musk Launches Paid Verification Before the Election first appeared on Mediaite.

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