208 Seattle Twitter employees part of widespread layoffs a week after Elon Musk takeover

SEATTLE - Twitter began widespread layoffs Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the company, raising grave concerns about chaos enveloping the social media platform and its ability to fight disinformation ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

The San Francisco-based company told workers by email Thursday that they would learn Friday if they had been laid off. About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety & integrity, confirmed in a tweet.

According to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN), 208 employees were laid off from the Seattle office. 

Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut the jobs "when the company is losing over $4M/day." He did not provide details on the daily losses at the company and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as a severance.