Twitter Layoffs Start Today

Twitter will tell employees by email on Friday about whether they have been laid off, temporarily closing its offices and preventing staff access, following a week of uncertainty about the company's future under new owner Elon Musk.

Reuters reports the social media company said in an email to staff that it will alert employees by 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (12 p.m. EDT/1600 GMT) about staff cuts.

"In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday," said the email sent on Thursday, seen by Reuters.

Twitter said its offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended in order "to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data."

The social media platform said Twitter employees who are not affected by the layoffs will be notified via their work email addresses.

Staff who have been laid off will be notified with next steps to their personal email addresses, the memo said.

Elon Musk

Some employees tweeted their access to the company's IT system has been already blocked and feared whether that suggested their layoffs.

The notification of layoffs caps off a week of purges by Musk as he demanded deep cost cuts and imposed an aggressive new work ethic across the social media company.

He has directed Twitter's teams to find up to $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings, according to two sources familiar with the matter and an internal Slack message reviewed by Reuters.

The layoffs, which were long expected, have chilled Twitter's famously open corporate culture that has been revered by its employees.

Several advertisers, meanwhile, have tapped the brakes on placing ads on the platform until they get a clearer idea of Musk’s plans. The new owner has said he wants to remove some content moderation, giving rise to concerns that hate speech, misinformation and other potentially harmful material will flourish even more freely. General Mills Inc. said it’s temporarily pausing advertising on Twitter, joining Volkswagen AG’s Audi and General Motors Co. in rethinking their presence on the platform.