Twitter reportedly laid off half of its workforce on Friday, but said the cuts were smaller in the team in charge of preventing the spread of misinformation, as advertisers cut back on spending due to concerns about content moderation.
According to tweets from the social media company’s employees, teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights, and machine learning ethics, as well as some product and engineering teams, were among those laid off.
Musk explained his reasoning for laying off nearly half of his workforce in a tweet. Twitter’s new owner stated that the company had no choice because it was losing money. “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” he tweeted.
The employees who are still employed by Twitter received an email confirming that they were not fired. The email has been published in its entirety by Insider Paper here:
Twitter email to employees who are still at the company
“Hello –
Thank you for your patience through this transition and for your commitment to the important work you do at Twitter. We are sending this email to confirm that your employment is not impacted by today’s workforce reduction.
We know you likely have a number of questions and we will have more information to share next week. In the meantime, please note that until Monday, Birdhouse is temporarily offline, our office buildings are temporarily closed and all badge access is temporarily suspended. Offices will reopen on Monday, Nov. 7th.
Thank you for continuing to demonstrate respect for impacted colleagues as we navigate these changes. As a reminder, we expect you to continue to comply with company policy by refraining from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.
We look forward to working with you on Twitter’s exciting future.
Twitter”
