Fake Twitter employees go viral outside HQ saying Elon Musk fired them

Just a day after Elon Musk closed the deal to purchase Twitter and the rumor of him laying off staff swirled the internet, two fake Twitter employees went viral after claiming they were data engineers.

After months of back-and-forth deliberations between Elon Musk and Twitter, the Tesla founder confirmed that he will be taking over the app on October 27.

Just over a week before taking over the app, it was revealed that Musk was allegedly set to fire nearly 75% of Twitter’s workforce — but as the date got closer, his plan became unclear despite reportedly firing its top execs as soon as he took over.

On October 28, two alleged Twitter engineers went viral on the platform claiming that they were let go by Musk — but it turns out they weren’t employees at all.

Fake Twitter employees go viral saying they got fired by Musk

Deidre Bosa, a reporter for CNBC, posted a photo on Twitter showing two men holding boxes in front of the company’s headquarters.

“It’s happening Entire team of data engineers let go. These are two of them,” it reads.

Her tweet quickly went viral, gaining nearly 50,000 likes in just a few hours.

Shortly after the tweet was posted, The Verge pointed out that one of the employees said their name was “Rahul Ligma,” which they confirmed does not exist in the company’s Slack or email system.

On top of that, The head of social media at Twitter retweeted her comment and said: “lmfao Reddit IRL outside apparently hoaxing pretty easy nowadays”

While it’s clear that these two men weren’t actually Twitter employees, it’s still unknown what changes Musk will make in the coming days as he takes over the popular social media platform.