Elon Musk has slammed activist groups for trying to "destroy free speech in the United States" after Twitter suffered a "massive drop in revenue".
The new Twitter CEO was evidently not happy with how the social media platform is currently performing, after tweeting on Friday (November 4): "Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, 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."
Musk's frustration comes amid news that he will be starting to lay off Twitter employees after only owning the company for a week.
According to the Wall Street Journal, multiple big-name companies - such as Volkswagen, Pfizer, Toblerone maker Mondelez International, and Betty Crocker owner General Mills - have pulled all advertising following Musk's highly controversial takeover.
The father-of-eight finally acquired Twitter last week, after first starting the process back in the spring. Since then, it is believed that over 3,700 people - half the workforce - are set to lose their jobs, per The Telegraph.
Several news outlets, like The Verge, have suggested that Musk is attempting to deflect from the mass layoffs with his recent tweet about Twitter's loss of revenue.
An email was sent out to all Twitter staff on Thursday (November 3) to inform them that those affected by the job cuts would be notified by 9:00AM the next day. "We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company's success moving forward," the email said, per the Wall Street Journal.
A group of workers has now decided to sue the social media giant - arguing that it is in breach of federal and California law by not giving enough notice to employees when announcing layoffs.
Bloomberg reported that the class-action lawsuit was filed in San Francisco on Thursday. The attorney who filed the lawsuit, Shannon Liss-Riordan, said: "We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt the make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights."
Pursuant to the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) large corporations are prohibited from mass layoffs without first giving 60 days of advance notice. According to court documents, one employee's contract was terminated on November 1 without providing an advanced written warning, which is required by the WARN Act.
Liss-Riordan sued Tesla over a similar situation, when 10% of the company's employees were laid off in June. "We will now see if he is going to continue to thumb his nose at the laws of this country that protect employees. It appears that he's repeating the same playbook of what he did at Tesla," she stated, via Bloomberg.
With Musk being "Chief Twit" for a little over a week, one can only wonder what the next few weeks and even months could bring.
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