If you’ve noticed that Twitter’s feed has somehow gotten worse – specifically from Monday morning, we’re sorry to say that you’re a victim of poor management. Plenty of people – regardless of whether or not they follow the owner of the big blue bird – have noticed an increased number of Musk’s tweets showing up in their ‘For You’ feeds.
Usually, that’s to be expected from an account that’s collected 128 million followers. But… something is different. Something is wrong.
‘More. More!’ ∼ Elon Musk, probably
And it’s all because Musk’s fragile ego can’t handle his tweets not being the talk of the town on his own app. His main concern seems to be the fact that his sub-par tweets and memes aren’t garnering the engagement he thinks they deserve. So, as any evil overlord does, he took matters into his own hands.
In addition to taking his account private for a day last week (in an attempt to boost engagement), the former world’s richest CEO reportedly called a meeting with engineers to discuss the falling standard of his tweet’s numbers, rather than focusing on his content.
“This is ridiculous,” Musk said, according to sources close to the matter. “I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.” When the assembled engineers delivered the news that Musk’s own waning public interest might be to blame, he reportedly fired two on the spot.
Since then, after several more tweets, memes and meetings – Musk organized a team of Twitter engineers. Their job was to deploy a “fix” that would allow Musk’s tweets to forego Twitter’s content filters and force-feed his tweets to every user of the platform. By Monday, it was complete.
He even tweeted out about his ‘victory’, which was reportedly posted in a meeting to test whether or not the deployment was making any sort of difference. It worked, apparently, as the tweet is currently sitting on 141 million impressions.
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Moving the goalposts (again)
Please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh .… “algorithm”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 14, 2023
After the initial deployment (and subsequent backlash), Musk hinted that he would backtrack his boosted account, tweeting “Please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh… “algorithm.” According to Platformer, which spoke to sources with knowledge of the matter, his account is still being boosted to more users. Although, not as much as Monday’s boost that allowed more than 90% of Musk’s followers to see his tweets.
That’s what Twitter has become, Elon Musk’s personal playground. And it won’t be getting any better either, as we’re force-fed more low-effort memes that could only appeal to ifunny.co regulars.
“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,” said a Twitter employee. “I think we’re past the point of believing that he actually wants what’s best for everyone here.”
Source: The Verge