SAN FRANCISCO - (AFP) - "About 50% of employees will be affected" by the company's ongoing layoffs, according to an internal document sent to Twitter employees seen by AFP on Friday.

The California-based company, which was bought by Elon Musk last week and had 7,500 employees at the end of October, began a series of layoffs around the world and announced the temporary closure of its offices.

"Woke up to the news that my time at Twitter is over," said Michelle Austin, Twitter's director of public policy for the United States and Canada. "I feel sad."

And before the layoffs, Twitter closed its offices all over the world and asked the workers to stay at home, awaiting news of their fate in the company.

Twitter employees have been anticipating this kind of bad news since Elon Musk completed his acquisition of the network for $44 billion late last week, and his haste to dissolve its board of directors and fire its CEO and a number of senior managers.

On Thursday evening, a group of five employees who were fired from Twitter sued the company for failing to notify them of the decision before the 60-day period required by US federal and California law, according to the text of the complaint.

"We are witnessing the real destruction of one of the most powerful communications systems in the world. Elon Musk is an eccentric billionaire who is not qualified to run this platform," said Nicole Gale, a Twitter director who was among a coalition of 60 human rights organizations that called Friday for an advertiser boycott of the platform.

The lawsuit is based on a law referred to as "Warren", which gives employees and workers the right to obtain early warning in cases of mass layoffs or closures of facilities.

The lawsuit also asks the court to prevent Twitter from requiring employees to sign documents that would result in a waiver of their rights under the Warren Act.

Musk's review of the workplace and staff, among other projects, was so grueling that some engineers even spent the night at Twitter's headquarters over the weekend.

The email, sent Thursday, told employees to go home and not come to work on Friday.
"Our offices will be temporarily closed and all private entry cards will be suspended," the letter said, and "those on their way to the office must turn around and go home."

The letter acknowledged that Twitter was going through a "challenging experience".

"We know this will impact a number of people who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but unfortunately this action is necessary to ensure the company's success continues."

However, some employees criticized these measures.

"The current layoffs are a travesty and a disgrace. Tesla guys are making decisions about people they know nothing about except for the number of lines of code produced. This is a travesty," Taylor Lees, the manager of a team of engineers who said he had been laid off, wrote in a tweet Sunday.

Several engineers were asked to type the last lines of code they produced, said an employee who asked not to be named.

Lists were also drawn up comparing computer scientists, particularly on the basis of their output, according to another employee.

Musk, who says the Twitter acquisition is overvalued, is looking for ways to make Twitter monetize quickly.

One of his ideas was to announce an eight dollar monthly fee for users wishing to verify their accounts on the platform.

A news report this week stated that Musk wanted to charge a $20 monthly fee, but faced angry reactions, including what famous book author Stephen King wrote, in a tweet, "$20 a month to keep the blue tick?", followed by an expletive.

Musk responded on Twitter, almost bargaining with King, saying, "We have to pay the bills somehow! Twitter can't just rely on advertisers. How about eight dollars?"

Global companies such as General Mills and Volkswagen suspended their advertising on Twitter Thursday, as pressure mounts on Musk to turn his platform into a profitable business.

Car giant General Motors was the first major advertiser to suspend its advertising in the wake of the purchase.

Officials and civil rights groups have expressed concern that Musk will open the site to hate speech and misinformation, and restore banned accounts, including that of former President Donald Trump.

Advertisers are Twitter's main source of revenue, and Musk sought reassurance that the site would not become a "nasty free-for-all place".