Reporters fall for prank as two men outside Twitter headquarters in California give interviews as fired Twitter Engineers
California: Two people who claimed to be employees of Twitter gave interviews to the media persons outside the Elon Musk-acquired firm’s headquarters in California. Those two have now turned out to be pranksters pretending to be laid off Twitter staff.
During their interview with CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa on Friday, the two sparked doubt when one of them claimed his name was “Rahul Ligma,” a common meme reference. The other identified himself as “Daniel Johnson.”
Both of them were spotted outside Twitter’s office carrying cardboard boxes and interacting with reporters.
Bosa tweeted, “It’s happening. Entire team of data engineers let go. These are two of them.”
After the duo spoke with the media, many media outlets, including CNBC, Bloomberg, the Daily Mail, and NBC reported the ongoing removal of employees from Twitter.
Suzanne Phan of ABC7 Bay Area reported one of the alleged employees said he was “terminated during a Zoom meeting.”
Also Read: Elon Musk Takes Charge Of Twitter; Parag Agarwal Among Purged Executives: Reports
Later a Bloomberg report stated, The Verge verified that the two pranksters weren’t truly former Twitter workers, confirming that Twitter’s internal Slack channels had been inundated with suspicions.
Product manager, Paul Lee, called out CNBC over its “misinformation.”
“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 donât use Zoom.”
You got conned.
Name is âRahul LIGMAâCâmon man pic.twitter.com/EdcuIk6jCP
— Dr. Randy J. Marsh â (@WealthyCFO) October 28, 2022
Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk has taken over Twitter. He sacked employees immediately after he took over. CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and legal affairs chief Vijaya Gadde were among the executives terminated by Musk, who formally completed the $44 billion buyout deal on October 28.
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