Following Elon Musk’s Twitter take-over, it has been a chaotic month on the social media platform. But now, Australian staff are in the firing line. 

On November 5th, the company began informing thousands of staff via email that they had been laid off. Eventually, it is expected to impact nearly half of Twitter’s employees. 

According to SkyNews, Aussie’s in Twitter’s government relations roles, marketing and news divisions have all been affected by job cuts. 

However, its sales team has been unaffected. 

The countless shifts are all due to Elon Musk appointing himself as “chief Twit,” following his acquisition of Twitter for a measly $44 billion USD.

“Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” tweeted Musk on November 5th. “Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”

Many of the changes being implemented are in support of Musk’s alleged push for free speech on the platform. 

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers,” suggested Musk. “Even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”

Another move Musk has made to make Twitter profitable, is to enforce an $8USD fee to obtain or continue to hold the blue verification badge. The decision has left many notable Tweeter’s livid.

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