Elon Musk, the new CEO of Twitter, justified his decision to fire over 50% of the company's workers. The billionaire asserted that the business is losing money as a result of certain advertisers' suspension of Twitter advertising.
These prominent brands have already paused their advertising on Twitter such as Volkswagen AG, General Motors, Pfizer Inc, and United Airlines. Since Musk took over Twitter last week and implemented significant changes, including content control, businesses are under increased pressure to determine whether to continue investing in the platform.
Musk promised advertisers that he would prevent Twitter from turning into a "free-for-all hellscape" just before taking over the social media company last week, giving them notice that there would be repercussions for breaking the site's rules against violence or spreading false information about Covid. (Also Read: Elon Musk’s Twitter sued for laying off employees)
Musk has also attributed the losses on a group of human rights organisations that had been pressuring Twitter's top advertisers to take legal action in the event that he did not defend content moderation. The groups announced on Friday that they are stepping up their campaign and requesting firms internationally drop their Twitter advertisements.
Yesterday Musk tweeted, "Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America".
And after that, Musk fired 7,500 employees from Twitter by alerting them through an email.
Musk published his first tweet following the layoffs on Saturday. The internet tycoon claimed that because the social networking platform was losing more than $4 million every day, he had no choice but to act.
"Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day.
Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required," Musk tweeted.
The layoffs affected employees who worked in engineering, communications, product, content curation, and machine learning ethics.
Twitter's acting head of human rights, an attorney named Shannon Raj Singh, announced on Friday that the entire department had been eliminated.
Employees on the platform reported that Twitter's curation team, which is in charge of "highlighting and contextualising the greatest events and stories that occur on Twitter," had been fired. A Twitter official in Asia claims that the company's Indian communications department has also been reduced in size.
According to the Reuters news agency, a team that concentrated on research into Twitter's algorithmic use, a subject that was important to Musk, was also disbanded.
On Friday, senior executives, such as Vice President of Engineering Arnaud Weber, also posted their farewells on Twitter. "Twitter still has a lot of unlocked potential but I'm proud of what we accomplished," he tweeted.
As Musk assumed control of the firm last week, Twitter fired key personnel, including its CEO Parag Agrawal, and disbanded its board of directors.
