This masthead revealed in July thatTwitter was closing its Australian office in Sydney,with staff to work from home.

All told,Musk wants to cut about 3700 jobs at San Francisco-based Twitter,people with knowledge of the matter said this week. The entrepreneur had begun dropping hints about his staffing priorities before the deal closed,saying he wants to focus on the core product.

“Software engineering,server operations&design will rule the roost,” he tweeted in early October.

Twitter was sued over Musk’s plan to eliminate the jobs,with workers saying the company is doing it without enough notice,in violation of federal and California law. A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday in San Francisco federal court. The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act restricts large companies from mounting mass lay-offs without at least 60 days’ notice.

Security staff at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters carried out preparations for lay-offs,while an internal directory used to look up colleagues was taken offline on Thursday afternoon,people with knowledge of the matter said.

Employees have been girding themselves for firings for weeks. In recent days,they raced to connect via LinkedIn and other non-Twitter avenues,offering each other advice on how to weather losing one’s job,the people said. Ex-Twitter engineers are also using social media to respond to former “Tweeps” looking to land jobs elsewhere.

Musk has also been meeting advisers to come up with new ways to make money from the blogging platform,includingcharging for verifications,which can help delineate real users from fake accounts.

He’s also considering reviving a long-since-discontinued short-video tool called Vine,a way to vie with popular video-sharing apps such as TikTok. Another product under consideration,The New York Times reported,is paid direct messages,which would let the rank and file send private messages to high-profile users.

Several advertisers,meanwhile,have tapped the brakes on placing ads on the platform until they get a clearer idea of Musk’s plans. The new owner has said he wants to remove some content moderation,giving rise to concerns that hate speech,misinformation and other potentially harmful material will flourish even more freely. General Mills said it was temporarily pausing advertising on Twitter,joining Volkswagen AG’s Audi and General Motors in rethinking their presence on the platform.

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