Wrong. Elon noticed his tweets had low engagement relative to his follower count compared to other accounts.
After some digging in the code base it turned out that there was a de-boosting factor based on the absolute numbers of blocks your account had, which affected popular and controversial accounts (like Elon’s) unfairly.
This investigation was initiated by Musk but it resulted in a great improvement in the algorithm with no special treatment for his account.
Well that's what the claim was. I never bought it, to me it sounded very much like the "Dear Leader Kim observed during the factory tour that one of the machines was miscalibrated and that productivity could be increased tenfold". Remember that he'd just fired an engineer on the spot for suggesting there wasn't a technical reason behind his lower engagement, and that the unspoken reason was he's frankly just a bit annoying and his epic meming CEO shtick was wearing thin. So I think when he raises the issue again, they just implement `author_is_elon` and they get to tell him that actually he is good at posting after all and there was just a weird technical issue they have now fixed.
Elon's happy, the engineers he turned to kept jobs and any time I find myself in the "For You" tab I see Elon's memes and his @catturd2 RTs.
> By Monday afternoon, “the problem” had been “fixed.” Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, meaning his posts will bypass Twitter’s filters designed to show people the best content possible. The algorithm now artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed.
> Internally, this is called a “power user multiplier,” although it only applies to Elon Musk, we’re told.
It seems indisputable that Musk’s account gets special treatment, even if some of the changes may also boost other controversial users.
You did not reference any sources, while the article claims sources inside Twitter gave them this information.
Anonymous Twitter sources may have _low_ credibility, but Elon musk has _exactly zero_ credibility at this point. He has a significant and proven track record of making false and misleading statements, even ignoring the many many more difficult to prove allegations.
In my personal experience, software engineers, when you ask them about technical matters like "does the code do X" or "is there a condition for Y" are generally pretty honest. Programming is a task that requires being able to have structured and literal reasoning, and asking engineers about purely technical details usually triggers that response, even if you can imagine a social motive for lying.
Disagree, Elon has high credibility IMO, certainly higher than an anonymous source with incentives to slander. Not saying he is perfect but given the scrutiny he is under and how much he is “in the arena” pushing the envelope.
Elon is furthermore a software engineer (he wrote ALOT of code at zip2 & paypal) so your argument falls flat in that regard.
Credibility from what exactly? Having last year's most expensive mid-life crisis? He once had some credibility, no one will deny that. Respect is earned and lost.
I think him buying twitter was great. He is lightyears better than previous owners & management. He is also running two other companies doing extraordinary things in the world.
Of all the people you can hate on in the world, hating on Elon is to me very odd. Tall poppy syndrome I guess...
You're making it sound like this commenter has some nasty personal vendetta on Elon, when it's just that Elon's a goofy dude who keeps embarrassing himself in a very public way.
This isn't Tall Poppy syndrome. This is Sideshow Bob repeatedly walking into rakes and getting smacked in the face.
He makes way more mistakes than I would like as well. But he also has made a lot of fantastic decisions that IMO outweigh by magnitudes the annoying irreverence he displays.
By the way, I’m not excusing his behavior by saying this, but I’m pretty sure the irreverence is a complete response to the struggles and pain from non-stop attacks from fighting giants in the arena for years. Putting yourself out there, living in the arena, especially to the extent he has, is super hard. Most of us don’t have the courage. If you do, you’re welcome to enter it and try to be a better role model. The world needs it.
He tried to fire a disabled employee via a public tweet without speaking to them privately first, and then had to retract it. This is McDonalds McManager behavior, not CEO behavior.
Musk did not write a lot of code at PayPal, that's factually incorrect. And he was ousted and replaced at PayPal because he was trying to make technical decisions that would've killed the company.
Note that some of the "false" statements later turn out to be true. E.g. holding child a last heartbeat happens (ex-wife held him for death rattle, elon for last heartbeat)
After some digging in the code base it turned out that there was a de-boosting factor based on the absolute numbers of blocks your account had, which affected popular and controversial accounts (like Elon’s) unfairly.
This investigation was initiated by Musk but it resulted in a great improvement in the algorithm with no special treatment for his account.