The social network Twitter loses four million dollars a day, which justifies laying off staff, said the new owner, Elon Musk.

Without specifying the total number of redundancies, Musk justified the decision in a message published on the network: "there is no choice when the company is losing around four million a day".

According to the US press, more than 3,700 workers will be made redundant, which represents more than half of the company's global workforce.

On Friday, Musk had already indicated that Twitter had seen a drastic drop in revenue, due to the departure of several advertisers because of "activist groups" that allegedly pressured companies to advertise.

As for the dismissed employees, Musk said that they had all been offered compensation equivalent to three months' salary, or "50% more than legally required".

However, some workers have already denounced the company for unfair dismissal, since they did not receive the 60 days' notice required by the labor law in force in San Francisco, where Twitter is headquartered.

Regarding the content moderation policy, Musk said "it remains absolutely unchanged", adding: "contrary to what you might read in the press, we saw at certain points in the week that hate speech fell below our previous standards".

The businessman has defended an absolutist view of freedom of expression, which critics believe could lead to a resurgence of abuses such as harassment, hate speech or disinformation.

Several groups have already decided to suspend advertising on Twitter, such as US agri-food giant General Mills, US car manufacturer General Motors and German competitor Volkswagen. (Noam)