Twitter confirms 50% of staff laid off

The job cuts mainly affect communications, content curation, human rights, and machine learning ethics teams

Social media platform Twitter has made good on its warnings and slashed 50% of its workforce, the company’s head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth announced in a tweet on Saturday.

“Yesterday’s reduction in force affected approximately 15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact,” he tweeted, emphasizing that the team responsible for monitoring and preventing misinformation and harmful content on the platform has remained largely intact.

According to Roth, battling misinformation on the platform will remain a top priority for Twitter. The same goal was emphasized by the company’s new owner, billionaire Elon Musk, in his own tweet. He ordered the layoffs, among other measures, in an effort to preserve the company’s finances, as Twitter has been experiencing “a massive drop in revenue” due to an exodus of advertisers amid concerns over content moderation under the new management.

“Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” Musk tweeted early on Saturday, noting that those who lost their jobs would be offered three months’ severance pay, “which is 50% more than legally required.”

READ MORE: Ex-workers sue Twitter over layoffs

According to a number of tweets by employees, the layoffs mostly affected communications, content curation, human rights, and machine learning ethics teams, as well as some product and engineering departments.

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