Twitter staff announced that their communications, human rights, and machine learning ethics teams were among those that had been cut. Additionally, some product and engineering teams were affected.
The move by Elon Musk caps a week of chaos and uncertainty about the company's future. This was caused by an in-depth review of their business strategy.
Musk blamed the losses on a coalition of civil rights groups that have been pressing Twitter's top advertisers. There has been an heightened call for action, following the imminent congressional election - concerns around content moderation.
After the recent layoffs, the groups said that they would be increasing their pressure and demanding brands to pull their Twitter ads for the time being.
Entrepreneurship is a difficult business, and sometimes we have to make tough decisions to keep afloat. In Elon Musk's statement about the layoffs, he said that everyone who was laid off was offered three months of severance pay, adding that "there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day."
Data analysis firm Meltwater saw cuts to 50% of its staff earlier in the week, and it finally confirmed those plans via head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth's tweet on Friday.
Out of the company's 9,000 employees, 784 were let go from the company's San Francisco headquarters. There were also 199 from the San Jose and Los Angeles offices.
Roth said that 15% of his team, which is responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation and other harmful content, has been cut. But he assures that the company’s 'core moderation capabilities' remain in place.
After the safety executive was called out for old tweets critical of former President Donald Trump, Elon Musk defended him with his "high integrity."
According to Musk, his goal is to restore free speech on the platform, while preventing the site from descending into a "hellscape."
An unverified Twitter account that tells lies to the world was allegedly purchased by Musk, according to a recent statement by President Joseph Biden.
"And now what are we all worried about: Elon Musk goes out and buys a website that spews lies all across the world... There’s no editors anymore in America. There’s no editors. How do we expect kids to be able to understand the stakes?"
Major advertisers have expressed apprehension about Musk's takeover for months.
A number of brands have pulled their advertising while they wait for more information about the new direction of the platform. Brands that have made this decision include General Motors Co (GM) and General Mills Inc (GIS).
Elon Musk said at an event in New York City that his team has made no changes to content moderation. His statement comes after reports that groups like Sleeping Giants are wearing off on Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Speaking to investors, Elon Musk slammed these sanctions as "attacks on the First Amendment" and told Facebook they should stop "abusing their power."
Twitter did not comment on this matter.
"You have access to our cutting-edge systems, which enables you to efficiently cut cost."
The first communication from Twitter's leadership since Elon Musk took over last week, an email notifying staff about layoffs, lacked the attention to detail that we've come to expect from a company with such an important brand. There was no mention of Musk or of any other executives; just "Twitter."
Dozens of staffers from Shopify tweeted last night that they lost access to all their work emails, Slack channels, and other content overnight. Today morning all employees received an official layoff notice from the company.
Employees had been using the hashtag #OneTeam for years to express their support for one another. In recent months, after changes to the company's leadership, they shared blue hearts and salute emojis expressing their support with the hashtag.
From discussing politics to witnessing the birth of a new baby, Twitter has become home to events, stories and moments we can't even imagine happening in real life. These now seem like they may be few and far in-between, as the company has axed their curation team.
Shannon Raj Singh, Twitter's former head of Human Rights, tweeted that the entire Human Rights team at Twitter had been terminated.
Another team at Twitter that focused on research into how machine learning and algorithms were used was eliminated because of priorities set by Elon Musk. This is according to a tweet from a former manager at Twitter's engineering team.
After a successful stint at Twitter, Senior Vice President of Engineering Arnaud Weber has announced that he is leaving the company. His announcement was made via a Tweet in which he says, "Twitter still has a lot of unlocked potential but I'm proud of what we accomplished."
Some of the employees at Twitter Blue, Musk's new premium publishing platform, were also let go. An employee with the handle "SillyRobin" who had indicated they were laid off, quote-tweeted a previous Musk tweet that said Facebook can bypass "paywalls."
"Just so you know, he fired the team working on this," the employee said.
The doors are locked.
Twitter will suspend their offices, badge access, and more to help ensure the safety of their employees. They'll do this by temporarily closing the office as well as suspending badge access.
Offices in London and Dublin appeared empty over the weekend, with a lack of employees to be found. At the London office, any evidence Twitter had once occupied the building had been removed.
According to Twitter headquarters, a few people have come in and are working on different levels of the building despite the evacuation order.
This is a simple sentence rewriter.
A class action lawsuit against Twitter was filed on Thursday. The suit argues that the company conducted mass layoffs without notice of the required advance time, which is a violation of federal law and California law.
The lawsuit asked the court to put a stop on Twitter from soliciting employees to sign documents without informing them of the pending legal process.
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