The new owner of Twitter has defended his decision to sack about half the company's global workforce.
Elon Musk said on the social media platform that he had no choice as the company was losing $4 million a day, reports Reuters.
Twitter employs around 500 people at its European headquarters in Dublin and began laying off members of its Irish workforce with some staff in the Dublin office receiving emails yesterday morning telling them that they were being made redundant.
Twitter said cuts were smaller in the team responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation, as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation.
Tweets by staff of the social media company said teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights and machine learning ethics were among those gutted, as were some product and engineering teams.
The move caps a week of chaos and uncertainty about the company's future under new owner Mr Musk, who tweeted yesterday that the service was experiencing a "massive drop in revenue" from the advertiser retreat.
He blamed the losses on a coalition of civil rights groups that has been pressing Twitter's top advertisers to take action if he did not protect content moderation.
After the layoffs, the groups said they were escalating their pressure and demanding brands pull their Twitter ads globally.
"Unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day," Mr Musk tweeted of the layoffs, adding that everyone affected was offered three months of severance pay.
The company was silent about the depth of the cuts until late in the day, when head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth tweeted confirmation of internal plans, projecting the layoffs would affect about 3,700 people, or 50% of the staff.
Among those let go were 784 employees from the company's San Francisco headquarters and 199 in San Jose and Los Angeles, according to filings to California's employment authority.
Mr Roth said the reductions hit about 15% of his team, which is responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation and other harmful content, and that the company's "core moderation capabilities" remained in place.
Mr Musk endorsed the safety executive last week, citing his "high integrity" after Mr Roth was called out over tweets critical of former president Donald Trump years earlier.
Brands including General Motors Co and General Mills have said they stopped advertising on Twitter while awaiting information about the new direction of the platform.
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