A recent report from Platformer claims that Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk made a team of 80 Twitter engineers develop a new system to artificially boost his tweets by a factor of 1,000 after his tweets during the Super Bowl resulted in lower engagement than those of President Joe Biden.
Platformer reports in an article titled “Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first,” that shortly after Elon Musk tweeted about the Super Bowl, the billionaire company CEO demanded that engineers develop a system to rank his tweets higher on the platform. The catalyst for this was reportedly that Musk’s tweet received less engagement than that of President Joe Biden.
Joe Biden (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
Platformer writes:
Biden’s tweet, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 29 million impressions. Musk, who also tweeted his support for the Eagles, generated a little more than 9.1 million impressions before deleting the tweet in apparent frustration.
In the wake of those losses — the Eagles to the Kansas City Chiefs, and Musk to the president of the United States — Twitter’s CEO flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team.
Breitbart News reported around this time that some users have been confused and frustrated by Twitter’s “For You” algorithmic feed after noticing a strange pattern: a lot of Elon Musk’s tweets and replies are suddenly showing up, even for users who didn’t see or interact with Musk’s posts in the past. This prompted Twitter’s CEO to acknowledge the issue with a meme.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 14, 2023
Platformer reports that on Sunday night, Musk addresses the Twitter engineering team of approximately 80 people. Musk stated that the issue was no priority number one and employees got to work through the night investigating possible causes for Musk’s tweets not reaching as many people as he believed they should.
One possible reason, according to the engineers, was that Musk’s reach may have been reduced as many users had blocked and muted his accounts in recent months. Another theory was that Twitter’s system has historically promoted tweets from users whose posts perform well for both followers and non-followers in the “For You” tab. Musk’s tweets should fall into that category but still were showing up less than half the time that they should based on internal estimates.
On Monday, Platformer claims that Twitter deployed code that would automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, allowing them to bypass Twitter’s filters designed to show people content relevant to them. Musk’s tweets were now being artificially boosted by the algorithm by a factor of 1,000, meaning they will always rank higher than anyone else’s in the Twitter feed.
According to Platformer:
Within a day, the consequences of that meeting would reverberate around the world, as Twitter users opened the app to find that Musk’s posts overwhelmed their ranked timeline. This was no accident, Platformer can confirm: after Musk threatened to fire his remaining engineers, they built a system designed to ensure that Musk — and Musk alone — benefits from previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets to the entire user base.
This would explain the sudden complaints from users of Musk’s tweets bombarding their Twitter feed. Over 90 percent of Musk’s followers now see his tweets, according to an internal estimate.
One current Twitter employee told Platformer: “He bought the company, made a point of showcasing what he believed was broken and manipulated under previous management, then turns around and manipulates the platform to force engagement on all users to hear only his voice. I think we’re past the point of believing that he actually wants what’s best for everyone here.”
Read more at Platformer here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan
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