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Australian Twitter employees were locked out of the company's systems on Friday ahead of anticipated mass global lay-offs.
- Elon Musk is expected to begin lay-offs on Friday morning US time
- The new owner has already fired executives and flagged big changes to how the platform runs
- Twitter no longer has an office space in Australia
The ABC was told most Australian staff had been logged out, which includes personnel in communications and marketing as well as news curation teams.
Elon Musk is expected to begin a cull of the company's 7,500-strong workforce on Friday morning (US time), after a week of rumours about his staffing plans.
It appears some Australian employees have not yet received official notice about whether they still have a job, but the mood was described to the ABC as "pretty low" and "grim".
Workers in the United States began to share screenshots showing they had lost access to Twitter's communication systems on Thursday afternoon, local time.
Twitter staff were told not to return to the office on Friday in an email sent to the company's international workforce, including in Australia.
"In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce," the email sent from Twitter said.
"We recognise that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company's success moving forward."
The company said its offices would temporarily close "to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data".
Mr Musk is quickly making his presence felt at the social media company for which he paid $US44 billion ($69 billion), firing its top executives, demanding extensive cuts to costs and floating various money-making strategies, including paid verification status.
Twitter's Australian team of under 50 is small compared to others globally, and the company no longer has office space in Sydney.
As his staff waited to hear if they had lost their jobs, Mr Musk replied to a tweet asking Twitter users to share the "craziest conspiracy theory you think might be true".
"I'm an alien trying to get back to my home planet," he replied.