Twitter continues to lay off its staff. The company’s management has just (again) laid off several employees in its key sectors on Thursday, December 22, according to information from CNN. The teams in charge of public policy, media and entertainment are particularly concerned.
Twitter Public Policy impacted
In the global public policy sector of Twitter, the teams still in place after the layoffs of the past few weeks have just been reduced by half. There would remain 15 employees in the working group, according to a former employee of the social network. In this context, Sinead McSweeney, global vice president of public policy, has just slammed the door of the company. Information confirmed to Reuters by two different sources.
The Twitter Public Policy team is in charge of designing the social network’s rules, which are supposed to ensure the safety of users on the platform. Sector employees are in direct contact with external advisory groups, regulators, and more generally civil society. The entity is also in charge of programs relating to human rights, the protection of citizens and journalists. Before the job cuts, the Public Policy team had no less than 60 employees.
A new staff cut that could impact Twitter’s compliance work with various regulators. The social network has, in particular, a “huge work to do” to comply with European laws on the Digital Services Act (DSA), European Commissioner Thierry Breton reminded Elon Musk.
Aggressive cost reduction
These new layoffs are in addition to those already committed over the past few weeks. Nearly half of the staff of the American company was fired. A carnage that raises questions about Twitter’s ability to regulate false information, online hatred or harassment. Since the takeover of the social network for 44 billion dollars in October, Elon Musk has continued to pursue two objectives: to allow greater freedom of expression and to achieve financial profitability.
To carry out the bluebird network’s quest for profitability, Musk is constantly cutting costs in all sectors. By doing so, he hopes to be able to clean up the financial situation in 2023. Twitter was like “an airplane heading towards the ground at high speed with engines on fire and controls not working”he assured during a question and answer session on Twitter.
According to the businessman, Twitter was on the verge of posting a negative result of three billion dollars a year before its takeover. “That’s why I’ve spent the last five weeks cutting costs like crazy“, he added.