Washington: Even though Twitter has recently seen mass layoffs and a rollback of implemented decisions, one thing is for sure, the microblogging platform's new CEO Elon Musk is a man of wits.
On Wednesday, the billionaire took to Twitter and shared a picture of him posing with two people who seemed like his employees. "Welcoming back Ligma & Johnson!" he wrote along with the picture.
In the next tweet, he added that it is "Important to admit when I'm wrong & firing them was truly one of my biggest mistakes."
At first glance, it would seem as if Musk has welcomed back two of his employees whom he had sacked during the mass layoffs that took place following his acquisition of the platform.
Don't be fooled
However, let's not be fooled. This seems like Musk's way of firing back at the Twitter trolls or the people who have been criticising his decision to sack Twitter employees.
The individuals featured in Musk's new tweet are the pranksters who almost a couple of weeks back had pretended to be laid-off Twitter employees in front of the media.
At the time, the duo tricked multiple media outlets as the public anxiously awaited news on whether Tesla CEO had begun axing staffers.
Several images and videos went viral in which two men carrying boxes were seen standing near the entrance of Twitter's San Francisco building, claiming to have been laid off by Musk. The richest man in the world had even come up with a witty reaction to the whole prankster episode by tweeting, "Ligma Johnson had it coming."
Musk's tweet was in reference to one of the pranksters who said his name was "Rahul Ligma" — a reference to a popular internet meme — and held a copy of Michelle Obama's book 'Becoming' aloft while speaking to reporters. The other said his name was "Daniel Johnson."
Why Musk 'fired' a Twitter Android app coder
App developer sacked via tweet
Musk, who has been laying off employees and contractors of the micro-blogging platform, has fired another member of his Twitter team and that, too, seemingly with a tweet.
The person whose employment was seemingly terminated by Musk is an Android developer named Eric Frohnhoefer who had stated in his tweet that Musk's assessment of Twitter being slow as the app is doing "1,000 poorly batched RPCs just to render timelines," was wrong.
Late on Sunday night, Musk tweeted, "Btw, I'd like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries. App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!"
Later, Eric cited Musk's tweet and wrote, "I've spent ~6 years working on Twitter for Android and I can say that this is wrong."
Following this, the richest man in the world asked him, "Then please correct me. What is the right number?" and also asked, "Twitter is super slow on Android. What have you done to fix that?"
As reactions to his Twitter conversation started pouring in, an unidentified user stated, "I have been a developer for 20 years. And I can tell you that as the domain expert here you should inform your boss privately. Trying to one up him in public while he is trying to learn and be helpful makes you look like a spiteful self serving dev."
To this, Eric replied by tweeting, "Maybe he should ask questions privately. Maybe using Slack or email."
Another user then chimed in and tagged Musk in his tweet, asking the billionaire, "with this kind of attitude, you probably don't want this guy on your team."
Musk responded to the same Twitter thread by simply saying, "He's fired."
Since acquiring Twitter Musk has fired several employees of the company including CEO Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Legal and even the Board of Directors.
He has also made a flurry of decisions impacting the working of Twitter which has millions of daily active users.
Among the biggest change that Twitter is seeing is the inclusion of the new $7.99 per month Blue subscription. However, Musk's decision to implement the blue tick fee did not go well with many. A number of advertisers pulled back from the site.
