Elon Musk defends layoffs, says Twitter losing over USD 4 million a day

The billionaire owner of Tesla tweeted that "activists" raising concerns about how Twitter is moderated are "trying to destroy free speech in America". 

Washington: Defending his decision over layoff of Twitter employees, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the micro-blogging site was losing more than USD 4 million per day.

Taking to Twitter, Elon Musk said, “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over USD 4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.” “Again, to be crystal clear, Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline *below* our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press, he added.

---

On Friday, as per an unsigned internal memo seen by The Verge, Twitter employees were notified in an email that the layoffs were set to begin. Musk is expected to cut roughly half of Twitter’s roughly 7,500-person workforce.

The entrepreneur’s purchase of Twitter for USD 44 billion was completed last week and on that same day, he fired several of the company’s top leaders, including the chief executive Parag Agrawal.

Musk had already indicated that he would make job cuts at Twitter, telling employees at a town-hall meeting this summer that there needs to be “a rationalization of headcount” at the social network.

Meanwhile, talking about the new changes in the micro-blogging site, Musk said in a tweet, “Again, to be crystal clear, Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline *below* our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press.” Earlier, Elon Musk, who closed the USD 44 billion twitter acquisition deal and took control of the micro-blogging platform, blamed “activist groups pressuring advertisers” for a “massive drop in revenue” as the company “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” Musk said in a tweet.

The billionaire owner of Tesla tweeted that “activists” raising concerns about how Twitter is moderated are “trying to destroy free speech in America”.