[Source: BBC]

Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, has blamed “activist groups pressuring advertisers” for a “massive drop in revenue” as the company makes sweeping job cuts in an effort to save money.

The billionaire owner of Tesla tweeted that “activists” raising concerns about how Twitter is moderated are “trying to destroy free speech in America”.

It came as Twitter made widespread job cuts around the world on Friday.

Reports suggested that thousands of staff lost their jobs.

An internal email sent to staff on Friday said the mass job cuts were “unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward”.

Staff confirmed on Twitter they had been logged out of work laptops and Slack, a messaging system.

Many staff revealed that they had been axed in posts on the platform, painting a picture of cuts that spanned the globe and hit departments that ranged from marketing to engineering.

They included communications, content curation, and product development employees.

A team that focused on research into how Twitter uses algorithms – an issue that was a priority for Mr Musk – was also sacked, according to a tweet from a former senior manager at the company.

More than 100 workers did not respond or declined to comment to the BBC on the moves.

Almost all of Twitter’s revenue currently comes from advertising and Volkswagen is among the brands that has stopped spending with it since Mr Musk bought the social media company.

“We are closely monitoring the situation and will decide about next steps depending on its evolvement,” Europe’s biggest carmaker said.

On Thursday, food manufacturer General Mills, which owns brands including Cheerios and Lucky Charms, did the same.

It said it was continuing to monitor the social media company’s “new direction” and wanted to “evaluate [its] marketing spend”.