Twitter sacked half of its 7,500-strong workers on Friday as new proprietor Elon Musk launched his main overhaul of the troubled firm only a week after his blockbuster takeover.

An inside doc seen by AFP mentioned “roughly 50 p.c” of workers have been impacted and could be denied entry to firm computer systems and e-mail on a direct foundation.

Staff around the globe have been proven the door and took to Twitter to vent their frustration or disbelief and say goodbye to one in every of Silicon Valley’s most iconic corporations.

“Woke as much as the information that my time working at Twitter has come to an finish. I’m heartbroken. I’m in denial,” mentioned Michele Austin, Twitter’s director of public coverage for the US and Canada.

Forward of the layoffs, Twitter closed entry to its places of work worldwide, asking workers to remain at residence to await information of their destiny by an e-mail.

“It is a fairly inhumane technique to deal with individuals. It looks as if a mercenary effort, they’re making an attempt to save cash in any respect price,” mentioned one dismissed worker who spoke on the situation of anonymity.

The cull is a part of Musk’s push to seek out methods to pay for the mammoth $44 billion deal for which he took on billions of dollars in debt and bought $15.5 billion price of Tesla shares, his electrical automobile firm.

Additionally learn: Revealed: How Elon Musk is firing Twitter workers

Firm sources mentioned that Musk’s groups have been imposing a livid tempo on the remaining workers, bringing in Tesla builders to supervise the work of “Tweeps,” the inhouse identify for Twitter employees.

Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief, is alleged to owe $1 billion in annual curiosity alone to pay for a deal he tried to wiggle out from nearly as quickly as he made it in April.

Musk has been scrambling to seek out new methods for Twitter to earn a living after his mammoth buyout, together with an thought to cost customers $8 a month for verified accounts.

The strikes would assist overcome the potential lack of advertisers, Twitter’s fundamental income, with most of the world’s prime manufacturers placing their advert buys on maintain, spooked by Musk’s well-known disdain for content material controls.

The mercurial tycoon on Friday complained on Twitter of a “huge drop in income” that he blamed on “activist teams” that have been pressuring advertisers.

“We did every little thing we may to appease the activists. Extraordinarily tousled! They’re making an attempt to destroy free speech in America,” he added.

This appeared to confer with Musk’s latest assembly with civil rights teams during which he heard issues that Twitter would open the floodgates to hate speech per week earlier than midterm election in america.

In an effort to appease nerves, Musk had vowed that Twitter is not going to change into a “free-for-all hellscape,” however his pledge was rapidly adopted by a tweet relaying a conspiracy idea about an assault on the husband of US Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“We’re witnessing the actual time destruction of one of many world’s strongest communication programs. Elon Musk is an erratic billionaire who’s dangerously unqualified to run this platform,” mentioned Nicole Gill, Government Director of Accountable Tech.

She was a part of a coalition of 60 rights teams calling on Friday for a boycott by advertisers of the Musk-owned platform.

Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, a number one civil rights group, mentioned it could be “immoral, harmful, and extremely harmful to our democracy for any advertiser to fund a platform that fuels hate speech, election denialism and conspiracy theories.”

Additionally learn: ‘Huge drop in Twitter’s income’: Elon Musk hits out at ‘activist teams’

“Till actions are taken to make this a secure house, we name on corporations to pause all promoting on Twitter,” he added.

Although extraordinarily influential with opinion-makers and celebrities, the California firm has lengthy struggled to generate revenue and has didn’t hold tempo with Fb, Instagram and TikTok in gaining new customers.

Within the signal that issues weren’t bettering, knowledge confirmed Twitter could have misplaced greater than one million customers since Elon Musk took over.

Estimates from Bot Sentinel, a agency that tracks Twitter accounts, prompt that greater than 875,000 customers deactivated their accounts between October 27 and November 1, whereas half one million extra have been suspended.