New Twitter owner Elon Musk is giving his justification for sending thousands of Twitter employees packing as he says the bird app was haemorrhaging money.
The Twitter owner Elon Musk broke his silence Friday night on the mass layoffs that happened earlier in the day at Twitter, claiming he had no choice but to cut folks loose, as he says the social media service was losing over $4 million a day.
The billionaire owner of Tesla tweeted that “activists” raising concerns about how Twitter is moderated are “trying to destroy free speech in America”.
It came as Twitter made widespread job cuts around the world on Friday.
Elon recently bought Twitter for a staggering $44 billion, with the help of loans from Wall Street banks and big-time investors, including at least $10 million from Diddy. So he’s got to find ways to cut costs.
Elon says the folks who were laid off were offered 3 months of severance pay, which he says is “50% more than legally required.”
Twitter lost about half its staff in the cuts, with roughly 3,700 people being let go from the company.
Elon fired off a chilling memo to Twitter’s workforce Thursday, informing them layoffs were coming … and employees fired back with a preemptive lawsuit
Musk has been on a firing spree since inking the deal to buy Twitter last month promptly giving pink slips to a slew of top execs.
The Laid off Twitter employees are now sharing their stories on social media ironically posting goodbyes on Twitter. But Elon’s saying his hands are tied.
An internal email sent to staff earlier on Friday said the mass job cuts were “unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward”.
Staff confirmed on Twitter they had been logged out of work laptops and Slack, a messaging system.
Many staff revealed that they had been axed in posts on the platform, painting a picture of cuts that spanned the globe and hit departments that ranged from marketing to engineering.
They included communications, content curation, and product development employees.
A team that focused on research into how Twitter uses algorithms – an issue that was a priority for Mr Musk – was also sacked, according to a tweet from a former senior manager at the company. But that was later denied.
Almost all of Twitter’s revenue currently comes from advertising and Volkswagen is among the brands that has stopped spending with it since Mr Musk bought the social media company.
Mr Musk has been looking for ways to cut costs and make money in different ways from the platform, including plans to charge a monthly subscription fee for users to be verified on the platform.
He also proposed that those paying the $8 per month fee would get their Tweets boosted in replies, mentions, and searches, prompting criticism from some people on Twitter that he was creating a two-tier system that would benefit those willing to pay.