A team that focused on research into how the company employed machine learning and algorithms, an issue that was a priority for Musk, was also eliminated, according to a tweet from a former senior manager.

Employees of Twitter Blue, the premium subscription service that Musk is promoting in order to improve revenue, were also let go. An employee with the handle “SillyRobin” who had indicated they were laid off, quote-tweeted a previous Musk tweet saying Twitter Blue would include “paywall bypass” for certain publishers.

“Just to be clear, he fired the team working on this,” the employee said.

Musk blamed the advertising 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 – concerns heightened ahead of potential pivotal congressional elections on Tuesday.

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,” Musk tweeted, 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, seen by Reuters earlier in the week, projecting the layoffs would affect about 3700 people, or 50 per cent 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.

Roth said the reductions hit about 15 per cent 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.

Musk endorsed the safety executive last week, citing his “high integrity” after Roth was called out over tweets critical of former US president Donald Trump years earlier.

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Musk has promised to restore free speech while preventing Twitter from descending into a “hellscape”.

President Joe Biden said that Musk had purchased a social media platform that spewed lies across the world.

“And now what are we all worried about: Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that sends ... that spews lies all across the world... There’s no editors anymore in America. There’s no editors. How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?”

Major advertisers have expressed apprehension about Musk’s takeover for months. Brands including Volkswagen, General Motors and General Mills have said they stopped advertising on Twitter while awaiting information about the new direction of the platform.

Musk tweeted that his team had made no changes to content moderation and done “everything we could” to appease the groups. Speaking at an investors’ conference in New York on Friday, he called the activist pressure “an attack on the First Amendment”.

The company hired consulting firm KPMG in some international markets, including in Asia, to assist with the layoffs, according to one person familiar with the manner.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

A class action lawsuit was filed has been filed against Twitter by its employees, who argued the company was conducting mass layoffs without providing the required 60-day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.