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    HomeNewsTrends‘Best trolls ever’: Elon Musk on pranksters pretending to be sacked Twitter employees

    ‘Best trolls ever’: Elon Musk on pranksters pretending to be sacked Twitter employees

    On Elon Musk’s first day in control of Twitter, two men stood outside the company’s San Francisco office with cardboard boxes, claiming to be data engineers who were just laid off.

    Sanya Jain
    October 29, 2022 / 13:40 IST
    Pranksters pretending to be sacked Twitter engineers (Image credit: @dee_bosa/Twitter)

    Elon Musk was much amused by a prank involving his recently-purchased social media company Twitter. After closing his $44 billion deal to take over Twitter on Thursday, Musk, in one of his first moves as the owner of Twitter, fired top executives including CEO Parag Agrawal. Even though he reportedly reassured Twitter staff that he had no plans to slash the workforce by 75% - as had earlier been reported – Musk’s takeover of Twitter stoked layoff fears that two pranksters used to their advantage.

    On Musk’s first day in control of Twitter, two men stood outside the company’s San Francisco office with cardboard boxes, claiming to be data engineers who were just laid off.

    It later emerged that the two were pranksters, not laid-off Twitter employees, but not before multiple media outlets fell for their prank. CNBC and Daily Mail were among the publications that reported on the ‘layoffs’ at Twitter after speaking to the two men, who identified themselves as Rahul Ligma and Daniel Johnson.

    “It’s happening. Entire team of data engineers let go. These are two of them,” CNBC reporter Deirdre Bosa tweeted alongside a picture of the duo.



    “They are visibly shaken. Daniel tells us he owns a Tesla and doesn’t know how he’s going to make payments,” she said in a follow-up tweet, fully believing the cooked-up story of layoffs at Twitter.

    After it was confirmed that the two were not fired data engineers, Elon Musk responded to the prank. The Tesla chief appeared to be amused by what the duo that managed to trick some leading media outlets.

    “One of the best trolls ever,” wrote Musk.


    Musk visited Twitter’s San Francisco office on Wednesday, where he told employees that he is not planning to lay off 75% of the staff when he takes over the social media giant, according to a Bloomberg report.

    Sanya Jain
    first published: Oct 29, 2022 01:39 pm

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