Hindi news channel AajTak fell for a satirical tweet from Elon Musk where the new boss of the social media site, Twitter claimed he had rehired two of the fired employees who had been sacked in the recent mass layoffs at the micro-blogging platform.
Musk's tweet came after he was criticised for firing a Twitter employee who called him out on the platform and corrected him when he said that the social media platform was functioning slow in many countries. The new Twitter chief has recently joked several times about the employees who were fired from the platform since him taking over.
The Hindi voiceover in the AajTak video claims, "Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has accepted his mistake. He admitted that lay offs at Twitter was his biggest mistake. Elon is realising his mistake after conducting mass lay offs at a large level. He is now making a U-turn and requested his laid-off employees saying, 'Please come back'. The process of calling back the employees has now started. Elon has also shared pictures of two of his returned employees amid this."
Click here to view the post. The video can be seen below.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a keyword search for "Ligma johnson" on YouTube and found a video from AFP News Agency's official channel featuring the same persons seen in the photo shared by Musk.
Click here to view the video.
The caption with video reads, "Pranksters pretending to be laid-off Twitter employees leave San Francisco HQ".
A article in The Verge spoke about the incident and also clarified whether employees named Ligma and Johnson ever worked for Twitter. The story said, "the name does not exist in Twitter's Slack or email system. There is also no evidence that the employee exists on LinkedIn."
Additionally, Ligma is a made up name with the word 'Ligma' a fictitious disease and internet hoax.
We also found that Elon Musk too joked about the misreporting saying "One of the best trolls ever"
Click here to view the tweet.
Elon Musk, himself, also joked about the tweet saying he is 'the taint' in response to the satirical tweet about 'rehiring' former Twitter employees.