Musk gives workers deadline to decide if they will be ‘part of the new Twitter’

Musk has tried to reassure companies that advertise on Twitter that it will not damage their brands by associating them with harmful content.

Elon Musk (Patrick Pleul/Pool via AP, File)

Elon Musk has asked Twitter’s employees to decide by Thursday evening if they want to remain a part of the business.

He emailed employees to say they “will need to be extremely hardcore” to build “a breakthrough Twitter 2.0″ and that long hours at high intensity will be needed for success.

Mr Musk said Twitter is a software and servers company at heart will become much more engineering-driven, with employees who write “great code” comprising the majority of the team.

The billionaire, who completed the 44 billion dollar takeover of the San Francisco company in late October, had already fired much of its full-time workforce by email on November 4 and is moving to eliminate an untold number of contract jobs for workers tasked with fighting misinformation and other harmful content.

Mr Musk has vowed to ease restrictions on what users can say on the social media platform, and has tried to reassure companies that advertise on Twitter that it will not damage their brands by associating them with harmful content.

He has also indicated that he plans to resume Twitter’s premium service — which grants blue-check “verification” labels to anyone willing to pay £6.99 (around €8) a month – on November 29.

The billionaire said in a tweet that the relaunch would take place later this month in an effort to make sure the service is “rock solid”.

He asked workers to click “yes” on a link provided in the email if they want to be part of the “new Twitter”.

He said that employees had until 5pm Eastern Time on Thursday to reply to the link.

Employees who do not reply by that time will receive three months of severance, according to the email.

“Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful,” Mr Musk wrote.