Pranksters Pose As Fired Twitter Employees As Elon Musk Takes Over
One of them identified as “Rahul Ligma” also spoke to the media, and said that the entire team of data engineers were laid off by Musk.
Tesla Chief Elon Musk, after becoming the new owner of the microblogging site Twitter immediately fired the former Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal along with several other top leaders. Reports also claimed that Musk is apparently running a cleaning drive and he may fire up to 75% of Twitter workforce. This gave some pranksters an opportunity to hog the limelight.
Several images and videos went viral on Friday in which two men carrying boxes are seen standing near the entrance of Twitter's San Francisco building, claiming to have been laid off by Musk, reported news agency ANI.
One of them identified as “Rahul Ligma” also spoke to the media, and in a cooked up story said that the entire team of data engineers were laid off by Musk. The second person identified himself as "Daniel Johnson."
Several media outlets in a bid to report the news first, failed to check authenticity and posted about Twitter employees leaving the company's headquarter. One of the more prominent posts came from CNBC's Deirdre Bosa, who posted that an "entire team of data engineers" had been let go, reported ANI, citing Mashable.
Bloomberg, the Daily Mail and NBC were other prominent outlets to run the news after the duo spoke to the media.
The media houses in a rush to break the news failed to realise that “Ligma” is an internet slang.
The news prompted Elon Musk to come out with a witty reaction to the whole prankster episode wit a tweet "Ligma Johnson had it coming."
Ligma Johnson had it coming 🍆 💦 pic.twitter.com/CgjrOV5eM2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
Paul Lee, a product manager at Twitter, was among those who called out the popular media organisation over its report and wrote, "Quite ironic that a major news outlet failed to do basic diligence and fell for a crisis actor prank, resulting in the spread of misinfo, on the first day of new ownership," Lee tweeted. "All you had to do was ask to see a badge or look for bird-themed stuff in the boxes. Also, we don't use Zoom."
Quite ironic that a major news outlet failed to do basic diligence and fell for a crisis actor prank, resulting in the spread of misinfo, on the first day of new ownership. All you had to do was ask to see a badge or look for bird-themed stuff in the boxes. Also we don’t use Zoom https://t.co/QtIrBjOH3H
— Paul Lee (@BeeBimBop) October 28, 2022
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