Twitter on Saturday said it has laid off 50% of its workers across the world after Tesla founder Elon Musk took over the microblogging platform on October 27.

Musk said that there was no option but to let employees go when the company has been losing $4 million a day. He blamed the losses on the activist groups that were putting pressure on the advertisers.

Musk reportedly plans to cut nearly 75% of Twitter’s workforce, just after completing his $44 billion(over Rs 3,36,910 crore) purchase of the social media company. He also became the “sole director” of Twitter, according to documents filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

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On Saturday, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth said that 15% of employees on the social media platform’s trust and safety team, which is responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation and harmful content, were laid off.

With the United States midterm election just days away, combating harmful misinformation that can “suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations” remained a top priority, he added.

“Again, to be crystal clear, Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged,” Musk tweeted shortly after Roth’s tweet.

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Meanwhile, in India, almost all the employees from Twitter’s sales, marketing, and communications teams were laid off, according to unidentified officials, PTI reported.

While there has been no official statement about the retrenchment, several employees took to the microblogging platform to confirm their layoffs.

Aditi Shorewal, whose Twitter bio says that she is the platform’s communications lead, on Friday said that she was prepared for the layoffs, but the news “still hurts”.

In the US, the decision to lay off employees has resulted in a lawsuit against Musk. In the suit filed in a San Francisco court, the plaintiffs contended that Twitter was terminating employees without giving notice as required by the law.