Australia's Pacific neighbour's spicy reply lit up social media. It was too good to be true

Kiribati appeared to hit back at a snarky social media post that teased the Pacific Island for having place names like London and Paris. But the government says all is not as it seemed.

Kiribati's government says it does not know who is behind social media account that purports to represent it. Source: Getty / Sara Medici

Key Points

• A post on social media platform X appearing to be from the government of Kiribati went viral earlier this week.
• The post responded to a user joking about the island country's place names, replying that they are "not invited".
• Kiribatian government officials say the account is fake, and that they don't know who is responsible for it.

It was too good to be true. The government of Kiribati on Wednesday said it was not responsible for a light-hearted social media post that went viral.

Earlier this week, the account @KiribatiGov responded to a snarky post on X — formerly Twitter — where a user gently teased the Pacific Island nation for having place names like Poland, Paris, London and Banana.

"I think Kiribati just gave up when it came time to name cities," the user posted, next to a map of Kiritimati, an atoll that is part of Kiribati.

The response from @KiribatiGov came swiftly: "Fine. You're not invited."

Who is responsible?

The post has been viewed 27 million times and was liked by more than half a million users.

But despite claiming to be from "The Official Account for the Republic of Kiribati", the account is not legitimate.

"It's a fake account," senior presidential communications official Tearinibeia Enoo-Teabo told the AFP news agency.

He said that X had been approached to address the issue of the unauthorised account, but "(we) still do not know who runs it".

If the perpetrator is on the island, he or she may be tricky to track down among the population of roughly 130,000 people.