Elon Musk, the business's new owner, claims he was forced to reduce Twitter's employees because the company is losing more than $4 million (£3.5 million) every day.
A week after Mr. Musk purchased Twitter in a $44 billion (£38.7 billion) transaction, the firm is laying off half of its employees.
The site has been used by Twitter employees to discuss their termination.
There are worries that Twitter would weaken content control, but Mr. Musk insisted that the company's rules are "completely unaltered."
Thousands of Twitter employees throughout the globe were reportedly losing their jobs on Friday, prompting concerns about what would become of the staff members in charge of removing dangerous content.
Online safety organizations and activists have warned that Mr. Musk may loosen Twitter's moderation standards, making the social media network less successful at eradicating hate speech and disinformation.
It is also possible to lift the indefinite Twitter bans imposed on unpopular persons, such as former president Donald Trump. The adjustments occur just before the US midterm elections when a rise in misinformation is anticipated.
Musk's remarks on Friday, in which he attempted to attribute Twitter's "huge loss in income" to "activist organizations" who were "trying to kill free speech in America," fueled these worries.
The majority of the more than 2,000 content moderators working on "front-line review," according to Twitter's Head of Safety & Integrity Yoel Roth, were unaffected.
He claimed that the "reduction in force" only affected roughly 15% of the business's trust and safety employees, as opposed to the company's whole workforce, which he said saw a 50% drop. The company employs about 7,500 people.
On Friday, US President Joe Biden expressed his worry over the transaction, stating "Elon Musk goes out and purchases a company that broadcasts misinformation throughout the globe... How can we expect children to comprehend the issues involved?"
The widespread job layoffs were "sadly essential to safeguard the company's success moving forward,” according to an internal email delivered to employees earlier on Friday.
Employees who had been locked out on work laptops and the chat app Slack verified it on Twitter.
In posts on the site, several employees disclosed that they had been let go, creating an image of global layoffs that affected divisions ranging from marketing to engineering.
Employees in product development, content curation, and communications were among them.
A worker who was anticipating job losses pondered whether his Twitter employee login or a head of lettuce would endure longer, making allusion to a British newspaper's widely shared viral stunt in which former prime minister Liz Truss was asked the same question.
My employee login @Twitter vs. Lettuce
— Sheon Han (@sheonhan) November 3, 2022
Let's goooooooooo pic.twitter.com/bgkZiLmH8T
Numerous well-known companies have stopped using Twitter for advertising, including Volkswagen, General Motors, and Pfizer.
Mr. Musk has been exploring ways to reduce expenses and gain money from Twitter in various ways, including ideas to charge users a monthly membership fee to be verified on the network. Currently, almost all of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising.
Additionally, he suggested that users who paid the $8 monthly fee would have their tweets appear more frequently in searches, replies, and mentions. This proposal drew criticism from some users on Twitter who claimed that he was establishing a two-tier system that would favor those who were willing to pay.
On Thursday, Twitter employees filed a class action complaint alleging that the business was violating federal and Californian law by making significant job layoffs without providing 60 days' notice.