San Francisco, California - Twitter employees who lost their jobs have been offered a three-month payout, according to tech billionaire and new owner Elon Musk, who said the company is losing more than $4 million a day.

The social media company began widespread staff cuts around the world on Friday, with suggestions as many as half of its more than 7,500 staff could be axed.

Its head of safety later said jobs cuts have affected about 15% of the trust and safety department, as opposed to approximately 50% of cuts company-wide.

Many who were laid off filed a class action lawsuit, citing the company violated California's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act.

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New owner Musk is thought to want to drastically reduce costs at the company after completing his $44-billion-dollar takeover of the platform last week, since tweeting "we need to pay the bills somehow."

"Regarding Twitter's reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day," Musk said on Friday evening, adding: "Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance."

The billionaire also tweeted a series of posts by head of safety Yoel Roth, which said: "Here are the facts about where Twitter's Trust & Safety and moderation capacity stands today. tl;dr: While we said goodbye to incredibly talented friends and colleagues yesterday, our core moderation capabilities remain in place."

He continued, "Yesterday's reduction in force affected approximately 15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.

"Last week, for security reasons, we restricted access to our internal tools for some users, including some members of my team.

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"Most of the 2,000-plus content moderators working on front-line review were not impacted, and access will be fully restored in the coming days.

"More than 80% of our incoming content moderation volume was completely unaffected by this access change. The daily volume of moderation actions we take stayed steady through this period," Roth wrote.

Musk, followed this with a tweet saying: "Again, to be crystal clear, Twitter's strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.

"In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline *below* our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press."

He had earlier accused "activist groups" of "pressuring" advertisers into leaving the social media giant and causing a drop in revenue.

The Tesla owner also replied to posts and memes from users about advertising, in one saying: "Twitter will not censor accurate information about anything."

Online safety groups and campaigners have expressed concerns about Musk's plans to allow more free speech on the site and reverse permanent bans given to controversial figures, including former President Donald Trump.

There have been reports that some advertisers have been concerned about the possibility of such figures returning and appearing alongside their ads on the site.

For now, Musk is holding fast to his belief that he supports "free speech on Twitter, unless you're making fun of me, which is illegal."