Twitter lays off thousands of employees as Elon Musk admits revenue ‘strongly dropped’

The above layoffs of Twitter come a week after billionaire Elon Musk took over the social media platform.

The number of layoffs this time accounts for about half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees. The mass layoffs come as Mr Musk revealed that brands have begun to reduce advertising on the platform, resulting in “a sharp drop in revenue”.

Audi, General Motors, General Mills and Pfizer are among the companies halting spending on Twitter advertising services, amid growing concerns about the direction of Twitter under Musk. It is known that advertising services account for 90% of Twitter’s revenue.

Just four days before the midterm elections in the US, in which hundreds of politicians are running, there were claims that “the entire” management team of Twitter had been fired.

Billionaire Elon Musk has laid off thousands of Twitter employees. (Photo: Reuters)

This could jeopardize Twitter’s ability to fight misinformation, even making risky content “more malicious”.

Reports indicate that staff on the public relations team responsible for managing communications with journalists and other organizations on Twitter have also been cut sharply. Other groups have been disbanded.

Some employees woke up on the morning of November 4 to find their laptops locked, while access to the company’s Gmail and Slack had been revoked.

An employee said the platform could not “operate as usual” on November 4 because so many people had their employee accounts locked.