from the outside, In the 1970s office building that was converted into Twitter’s European headquarters, it doesn’t look like much has changed. But inside, the mood has turned sour.
Just like in the U.S., Twitter’s teams in Europe have suffered massive layoffs. Staff at the 1 Cumberland Square office in Dublin, Ireland, which once housed around 500 Twitter employees, have been using war terms to describe events over the past week. Those who stayed on staff were “survivors” and colleagues who were fired were “fallen,” said a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named. Employees in Ireland first heard from the company’s new owner, Elon Musk, on Nov. 10, nearly two weeks after he was acquired. In an email, they were told they would be required to work 40 hours a week in the office.
There is no centralized list of who was fired. Instead, employees have been checking their colleagues’ status on the workplace messaging app Slack to see if they’re still working. Dublin is not the only European office affected by the layoffs. Staff in Brussels and London were also fired, social media posts showed. It is unclear whether employees at Twitter’s other European hubs – Hamburg, Madrid, Utrecht, Paris, Berlin and Manchester – have also been affected.
In Europe, a major concern is the fate of Twitter’s Brussels-based team of six to eight people, which works on European policy and is the main point of contact with regulators who are working on upcoming legislation that could affect the entire platform. Only two people remain, two people familiar with the matter said.
That means Twitter has cut its team as the EU introduces landmark new tech rules, said Mathias Vermeulen, director of Brussels-based consultancy AWO. “At a time when so many obligations are going to be imposed on companies, and at a time when regulators expect meaningful relationships with people in Brussels, this is definitely not good news.” He said, by contrast, Meta and Google in The cities each employ 20 to 30 people. Twitter did not respond to Wired’s request for comment.
Even before the acquisition, the company faced a wave of scrutiny across the group. Trials for hate speech and defamation are pending in France, Germany and the Netherlands. and privacy. There are also concerns in Ireland that Twitter is not adhering to the country’s strict employment rules as it undertakes mass layoffs. Ireland’s Tánaiste (or under-government minister) Leo Varadkar has yet to receive information about potential job cuts required by Twitter’s law, a spokesman for Enterprise Ireland told Wired. notice of collective layoffs. The European Parliament has grown increasingly uneasy about Musk’s pledge to comply with Europe’s new Digital Services and Digital Markets Act, as its policy team in Brussels has been shrunk to a skeleton staff.
Europe has been eager to prove that its rules have sway over the world’s biggest tech platforms, including Twitter. In May, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton posted a video on Twitter showing him discussing the Digital Services Act with Elon Musk. “That’s exactly what I thought,” a respectful Musk said in the clip. However, Musk’s remarks about free speech and moderate team layoffs have made Europeans nervous.Owned by Trust and Safety, the team responsible for content moderation 15% loss Number of employees worldwide, according to Yoel Roth, head of security and integrity at Twitter.
