Post Date: Post Date – 11:00 PM, Friday – November 4th
(FILE PHOTO) Twitter began mass layoffs on Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauled the social platform.
New York: Twitter began mass layoffs on Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauled the social platform.
The company has told employees via email that if they are fired, they will find out if they are fired by 9 a.m. PDT (noon ET). The email did not say how many of the roughly 7,500 employees would lose their jobs.
Musk did not confirm or correct investor Ron Barron when he asked the billionaire Tesla CEO how much he would save after “fired half of Twitter” at a meeting in New York on Friday. .
Speaking at Baron’s annual investment conference, Musk addressed Twitter’s ongoing cost and revenue challenges and blamed activists this week calling on big companies to stop advertising on the platform. Musk himself did not comment on the layoffs.
“Activist groups have been successful in causing a massive drop in Twitter ad revenue, and we’ve done our best to appease them, but nothing has worked,” Musk said.
Some employees at the San Francisco-based company tweeted earlier that they had lost access to their work accounts. They and others posted messages of support using the hashtag #OneTeam. The email to employees said the layoffs were “necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”
Twitter employees have been anticipating layoffs since Musk took the helm. On his first day as Twitter owner, he has fired executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal.
Musk also dismissed the company’s board and named himself the sole board member. On Thursday night, many Twitter employees took to the platform to show their support for each other — often just tweeting the blue heart emoji to represent Twitter’s bluebird logo — and saluting the emoji when replying to each other.
As of Friday, Musk and Twitter had not made any announcements about the upcoming layoffs, according to a spokesman for the California Employment Development Department. Even the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires employers with at least 100 workers to disclose layoffs involving 500 or more employees, whether the company is publicly traded or privately held.
A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of a fired employee and three others locked out of work accounts. It claimed Twitter intended to fire more employees and violated the law by not providing the required notice.
The layoffs come at a tough time for social media companies as advertisers downsize and newcomers — chiefly TikTok — threaten older platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
In a tweet on Friday, as employees were figuring out whether they would lose their jobs, Musk blamed activists for a “significant drop in revenue” since taking over Twitter late last week. He did not say how much revenue fell.
Major companies including General Motors, General Mills and Audi have all paused their Twitter ads amid questions about how Musk will operate. Volkswagen Group said on Friday it was recommending its brands, including Skoda, Seat, Cupra, Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, Porsche and Ducati, to suspend paid campaigns until Twitter publishes revised brand safety guidelines.
Musk has tried to appease advertisers, but they remain concerned about whether content moderation will remain so stringent and whether staying on Twitter will damage their brands.
In a tweet in which he blamed activists for the drop in revenue, Musk said “nothing has changed on content moderation.”
Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said, “When Musk keeps the company in a state of uncertainty and turmoil, and is indifferent to Twitter employees and the law, he has little to appease advertisers.”
“Musk needs advertisers, not they need him,” she said. “Removing ads from Twitter is a quick and easy decision for most brands.”
