Musk Says He Had ‘No Selection’ in Making Twitter Layoffs

Elon Musk mentioned the huge job cuts he ordered Friday at Twitter — axing roughly 50% of the social community’s staff — have been unavoidable.

“Concerning Twitter’s discount in power, sadly there isn’t a selection when the corporate is dropping over $4M/day,” the billionaire tweeted. He mentioned each Twitter staffer who was fired was supplied three months of severance, which Musk mentioned is “50% greater than legally required.”

Musk want to chop prices at Twitter as a result of the corporate was going through a not solely a excessive burn fee but additionally the necessity to repay (and pay curiosity on) the $13 billion in debt he raised to swing the takeover.

Twitter notified staff Thursday that they’d discover out by way of e mail on Friday whether or not or not they nonetheless had a job. All instructed, about 50% of the corporate employees — roughly 3,700 of Twitter’s 7,500 staff — was laid off, in keeping with a tweet by Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of security and integrity.

In a Twitter thread, Roth mentioned about 15% of the corporate’s Belief & Security group was let go, in contrast with 50% cuts companywide. He claimed Twitter’s front-line moderation employees “experienc[ed] the least affect.”

Musk reiterated Friday that “Twitter’s robust dedication to content material moderation stays completely unchanged. Actually, we’ve really seen hateful speech at occasions this week decline under our prior norms, opposite to what chances are you’ll learn within the press.”

Earlier Friday, Musk complained that “activist teams” have been accountable for a dramatic falloff in income at Twitter, though the corporate was already going through a problem financial surroundings earlier than Musk closed the $44 billion takeover.

“Twitter has had an enormous drop in income, because of activist teams pressuring advertisers, though nothing has modified with content material moderation and we did the whole lot we may to appease the activists,” Musk tweeted Friday. “Extraordinarily tousled! They’re making an attempt to destroy free speech in America.”

A number of Twitter staff have sued the corporate, alleging it violated the Employee Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act by failing to inform employees members 60 days forward of a mass layoffs. The swimsuit seeks to order Twitter to adjust to the regulation and block the corporate from soliciting staff to signal paperwork that would hand over their proper to take part in litigation..