Summary
That’s all for our live coverage today, but we’ll continue to cover developments in the coming days. For now, here’s where things stand:
Twitter has laid off roughly half of its workforce, with an estimated 3,700 cuts across the company.
Audi, General Motors, General Mills and Pfizer were among those who halted advertisements, amid concerns Elon Musk will scale back misinformation and security protections on the platform.
The mass layoffs have reportedly gutted teams that cover human rights, machine learning ethics, curation, communications and accessibility.
Musk said there has been a mass drop in revenue due to advertisers leaving Twitter, which he claimed was an attack on free speech.
Twitter is facing a class-action lawsuit from former employees who say they were not given enough notice under US federal law that they had lost their jobs.
Derrick Johnson, the NAACP’s president, who met with Elon Musk on Tuesday, issued a statement urging all companies to pause ads on the platform.
With possible cuts to spending on critical resources such as cloud storage and servers, experts are particularly concerned about the impact on US midterm elections.
Updated
Guardian US technology reporter Kari Paul’s analysis of the layoffs and what they mean for the future of Twitter:
With possible cuts to spending on critical resources such as cloud storage and servers, experts are particularly concerned as the US midterm elections approach, when larger numbers of users than usual go to the platform to follow breaking news and share information.
An internal source at the company told Reuters the infrastructure cuts were “delusional”, adding that when user traffic kicks up, the service can fail “in spectacular ways”.
The layoffs are also calling into question Twitter’s ability to keep the platform safe and secure, and come after a whistleblower accused the company of “egregious” failings in security and safety.
“Elon Musk’s layoffs to Twitter’s policy enforcement teams will destroy the platform’s capacity to stop the spread of hate speech, misinformation and disinformation at a time when the American public and voters need access to facts and civil discourse more than ever,” said Jim Steyer, founder and CEO of digital rights group Common Sense Media.
The reports of drastic cuts to the communications staff raised concerns Twitter may follow in the path of other Musk companies like Tesla, which do not communicate with the press. Musk, who has historically had an adversarial relationship with media, dissolved the electric car company’s public relations department in 2020 in an unprecedented move.
