Twitter laid off a large portion of its contract workforce over the weekend, according to multiple reports.
Platformer’s Casey Newton first reported the layoffs Saturday, and said Sunday that about 4,400 of Twitter’s 5,500 contract workers in the U.S. and abroad had been let go. The cuts came without warning, Newton reported, with some workers not realizing they had been laid off until they lost access to their internal Slack and email. Twitter also reportedly failed to notify managers of the layoffs.
The layoffs are expected to have “significant impact to content moderation and the core infrastructure services that keep the site up and running,” Newton said.
CNBC, Insider and Axios independently confirmed significant layoffs. A MarketWatch email to Twitter seeking confirmation or comment was not returned Sunday; Twitter recently cut its entire communications staff.
Citing an internal email it obtained, Insider reported the cuts were described as a “reprioritization and savings exercise.” The email said that the affected workers’ termination will be effective Monday, but “system and badge access will be shut off immediately.”
The cuts came a little over a week after Twitter laid off about half its workforce of 7,500 people, in a cost-cutting move following its acquisition by billionaire Tesla
TSLA,
CEO Elon Musk.
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