Elon Musk has justified the massive layoffs at Twitter by claiming that the firm, which is losing more than $4 million a day, gave sacked workers a three-month payment.
As many as half of the firm's more than 7,500 employees may lose their jobs, according to reports that the corporation started massive staff reductions throughout the world on Friday.
"Regarding Twitter's decrease in force, regrettably there is no option when the firm is losing over $4M/day," Musk wrote in a tweet on Friday evening. Three months of severance were granted to everyone who left.
After successfully completing his $44 billion ($39 billion) acquisition of the platform last week, Musk is rumored to want to substantially cut costs at the firm.
Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of safety, had written a number of pieces that he had tweeted, saying: "Here are the facts concerning where Twitter's Trust & Safety and moderating capability are today. Even though we bid a fond farewell to several highly skilled friends and coworkers yesterday, our fundamental moderating tools are still in place.
About 15% of our Trust & Safety organization was impacted by the decrease in force yesterday (as opposed to 50% company-wide), with our front-line moderators feeling the least of a difference.
"Last week, we blocked access to several people, including some members of my team, for security concerns. The vast majority of the 2,000+ content moderators engaged in the front-line review were unaffected, and access will return in full over the next several days.
"More than 80% of the volume of inbound content we moderate was unaffected at all by this access modification. Through this time, the amount of moderation-related acts we do each day remained constant.
"Again, to be perfectly clear, Twitter's strong commitment to content moderation is totally unchanged," Musk tweeted in response. Contrary to what you may hear in the press, we have actually observed a reduction in hate speech at periods this week that is *below* our historical averages.
Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of safety, had written a number of pieces that he had tweeted, saying: "Here are the facts concerning where Twitter's Trust & Safety and moderating capability are today. Even though we bid a fond farewell to several highly skilled friends and coworkers yesterday, our fundamental moderating tools are still in place.
About 15% of our Trust & Safety organization was impacted by the decrease in force yesterday (as opposed to 50% company-wide), with our front-line moderators feeling the least of a difference.
Concerns over Musk's ambitions to increase free speech on the website and lift permanent prohibitions on divisive individuals like Donald Trump have been raised by online safety organizations and activists.
In a letter to Grant Shapps, the UK's business minister, the Prospect union, which represents thousands of technology workers, including those at Twitter, said that the company had behaved "in an unethical fashion."
According to Simon Deakin, a law professor at the University of Cambridge, the business secretary must be notified 45 days prior to the first dismissal if 100 or more employees of a firm are let go during a 90-day period. The time frame is 30 days in cases where there are more than 20 possible losses but fewer than 100.
"If there isn't an effective warning issued here, there might be a consequence, therefore the director or employer could be penalised," Deakin said. Additionally, there is presently no upper limit on the fine, and it is a crime.
We don't know the complete story, what the establishment is, or whether they have given notice, but if they are laying off 100 people, there may have been a crime committed.