‘No choice’: Musk defends layoffs at Twitter, says company loses $4 million a day

Elon Musk has claimed he had no choice but to fire thousands of Twitter employees as the platform lost a staggering $4 million every day.

Elon Musk has defended the mass layoffs on Twitter. (AP photo)

By India Today Web DeskTwitter: Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, has claimed that the big round of layoffs at the microblogging platform was necessary because of the millions of dollars the company was losing every day.

To soften the blow, he clarified that all those who lost their jobs were offered three months of severance pay, “which is 50 percent more than required by law”.

“As for the diminution of Twitter’s power, unfortunately there is no choice when the company loses more than $4 million per day. Anyone who left was offered 3 months of redundancy, which is 50% more than required by law,” Musk said in a tweet.

The job loss at Twitter came a week after the billionaire business magnate took over the platform after a $44 billion buyout. From firing executives to proposing a new content moderation board, a lot has happened with Musk at the helm.

In the days following his takeover, there were reports that he planned to cut at least half of the jobs at Twitter in an effort to cut costs and save money. After denying the reports, Musk made a U-turn and began firing employees on Friday.

“In an effort to put Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” Twitter said in an internal memo to staff hours before the first round of mass layoffs began.

READ | Elon Musk to Twitter Employees, Go Home When You Come to the Office: Read Layoff Confirmation Email

The cuts appear to be as broad as they are deep, affecting everything from Twitter’s trust and security teams that handle content moderation to the marketing department. According to reports, the company’s entire human rights team has been fired.

In the wake of the layoffs, Twitter employees have sued the tech giant and filed a class action lawsuit alleging the company carried out mass layoffs without giving the required 60 days notice, in violation of federal and California law. .

ACTIVISTS TO LET THE DEBT OF INCOME WRITE?

Significantly, the Tesla CEO also blamed “activist groups that pressure advertisers” for a “massive drop in sales.” However, he did not specify how much Twitter’s revenue has fallen, or which activist groups are involved.

Musk tweeted that his team had made no changes to content moderation and had “did everything” to please the groups. “Extremely confused! It’s (civil rights groups) trying to destroy free speech in America.”

Speaking at an investor conference in New York on Friday, Musk called the activist pressure “an attack on the First Amendment.”

It’s also notable that several major advertisers, such as Tesla rival General Motors, food company General Mills and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, have temporarily paused their ad campaigns on Twitter since Musk took over the reins.

(With input from Reuters)