Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, is defending massive layoffs at the company on none other than the social media platform itself, of course.
Citing the company hemorrhaging more than $4 million on a daily basis, as well as claiming the employees who were let go were given three-month severance packages, Musk said he had “no choice” to take such a drastic measure.
The three-month severance packages Musk referenced, which he said were “50% more than legally required,” was in apparent response to reports that employees only received one-month severance packages, as the We Got This Covered live blog noted.
Just how many employees has Musk laid off at Twitter? Apparently, the estimate is that “as many as half of its more than 7,500 staff could lose their jobs,” according to The Guardian.
Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter last week after a back-and-forth that stretched on for months. Earlier in 2022, Musk pledged to buy the company, but then he tried to back out of the deal. When Twitter tried to sue Musk in order to force him to make good on his purchase, he chose to finalize the deal after all, in all likelihood in order to avoid the legal headache associated with going to trial.
One thing is clear: Advertisers have apparently been fleeing the platform. The reason for that mass exodus is different depending on who you ask. Musk has laid the blame on “activist groups” putting pressure on advertisers to leave the platform. However, news reports have pointed to a surge in hate speech since Musk has taken over the platform, by some estimates up to 500 percent immediately following the acquisition, as NBC Bay Area reported.