Twitter reportedly started prioritizing Elon Musk’s posts. His Eagles tweet had a role.
Um, go Birds?
Twitter CEO Elon Musk ordered an update to the platform that would boost and prioritize his own tweets on users’ feeds, according to a report based on internal Twitter documents. It appears his tweet supporting the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl helped get the ball rolling.
Platformer — a news outlet that covers the intersection of tech and democracy — reported Monday that internal Twitter documents showed that Musk ordered company engineers to “fix” the platform to juice his tweets, or risk being fired.
Here’s what you need to know.
Musk’s Philadelphia Eagles tweet prompted a new directive at Twitter HQ
The initial order came in an internal message at 2:36 a.m. Monday from Elon Musk’s cousin, James Musk, according to Platformer’s report. Elon Musk had attended the Super Bowl on Sunday and tweeted about 7 p.m. in support of the Eagles.
President Joe Biden — whose wife, first lady Jill Biden, is a proud “Philly girl” — tweeted his support for the Birds about 40 minutes later. It generated more than three times more public views than Musk’s tweet. Musk then did an online walk of shame after the Eagles lost to the Kansas City Chiefs, deleting his tweet.
Through reviewing internal documents and speaking with people close to Twitter, Platformer reported that the Eagles tweet dichotomy is what sparked the new directive to boost Musk’s tweets for all users.
Twitter engineers introduced a mechanism to super-boost Musk’s and only Musk’s tweets
Recent tech news developments have shown how other social media platforms manually prioritize users’ posts. A Forbes report last month revealed an internal practice on TikTok called “heating,” which gives staff the ability to secretly boost the distribution of videos. But Musk’s approach appears particularly self-serving, impacting only his own tweets.
As noted by Insider, Musk has publicly obsessed over his engagement on Twitter. Last week, he fired a top engineer after that person suggested that Musk’s engagement downtick was because of decreased public interest in the CEO. He also turned previously private impression data on tweets into public view counts.
Platformer reported that about 80 people were pulled in to work on the project, working through the night to figure out how to make Musk’s tweets more visible.
Monday, engineers introduced code that would automatically approve Musk’s tweets, bypassing content filters that are supposed to curate the best tweets for a particular user. It’s called the “power user multiplier” and works only for Musk, Platformer reported. That multiplier would keep his tweets ranked higher than anyone else’s on a user’s feed.
How has the new code impacted users’ Twitter experience?
By Monday afternoon, Twitter users noted seeing a barrage of Musk tweets on their main feed, regardless of whether they followed him.
A day later, Musk seemingly acknowledged his newly boosted presence.
He posted a version of the niche “forced to drink milk” meme. The meme — which began appearing in 2017 according to Know Your Meme — is a template style on which users put labels on top of a photo of a woman force-feeding another woman a bottle of milk. Musk’s version labeled the woman holding the bottle of milk, “Elon’s tweets” and the woman being force-fed, “Twitter.”
How were Musk’s changes received by Twitter users?
In a word: poorly.
As noted by Know Your Meme, responses sparked contempt. The meme website said Musk’s updates turned Twitter into a “quasi-personal blog for anyone who doesn’t directly have him blocked.”
But things are still changing. In a tweet early Tuesday morning, he suggested that his team would make “adjustments to the uh .... ‘algorithm.’”
Platformer reported that by Tuesday, Musk’s artificial boosts were still in place but were decreased. The outlet added that Musk’s tweets continue to perform on the higher end of his recent views average.