UNITED STATES: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the company’s new owner, tweeted on Friday that the site was seeing a “massive drop in revenue” as advertisers pulled the money. The decision comes after a week of tumult and ambiguity about the company’s future.
After closing the doors to the buildings and denying staff access to internal systems overnight, Twitter Inc. began a significant wave of layoffs on Friday, notifying employees through email of their employment status.
Musk attributed the losses to a collection of civil rights organizations that have been pressuring Twitter’s major advertisers to take legal action if he did not defend content moderation. The groups announced on Friday that they are stepping up their campaign and requesting firms internationally drop their Twitter advertisements.
Employees who worked in engineering, communications, product, content curation, and machine learning ethics were among those affected by the layoffs, according to posts from Twitter staff.
Shannon Raj Singh, an attorney who serves as Twitter’s interim head of human rights, stated on Friday that the entire department had been abolished.
Musk has pledged to protect Twitter from becoming a “hellscape” while restoring free speech. Major advertisers, who have been concerned about his takeover for months, have not been reassured by his assurances.
Following Musk’s takeover, Volkswagen AG advised its brands to halt paid Twitter advertising until further notice, the company said on Friday. The remarks were similar to those made by other businesses, such as General Motors Co. and General Mills Inc.
President of the civil rights coalition’s Media Matters for America, Angelo Carusone, claimed to be aware of two additional sizable advertisers who were getting ready to make the announcement that they will suspend ads on the platform.
Numerous employees mistook the loss of access to their company’s Slack and email channels, which they assumed to mean they had been let go, for an official notice of their termination.
Using the hashtags #OneTeam and #LoveWhereYouWorked—the past tense of a phrase staff members have long used to praise the workplace environment—they tweeted blue hearts and salute emojis to show their support for one another.
The curation staff at Twitter, which is in charge of “highlighting and contextualizing the best events and stories that occur on Twitter,” was reportedly sacked, according to platform users. According to a Twitter representative in Asia, the company’s Indian communications division has also seen a size reduction.
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