Elon Musk modified the timeline to ensure his tweets came up first. Musk Response. UPDATE with Data to prove it.

[Uttamattamakin]

Summary

Due to his tweets getting less engagement than the President of the United States of America Elon Musk ordered Twitters engineers to ensure his tweets showed up first on everyone's timeline.   This is even if you don't follow him at all. 

 

Quotes

Quote

When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.

 

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.

Quote

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. 

 

In recent weeks, Musk has been obsessed with the amount of engagement his posts are receiving. Last week, Platformer broke the news that he fired one of two remaining principal engineers at the company after the engineer told him that views on his tweets are declining in part because interest in Musk has declined in general.

 

His deputies told the rest of the engineering team this weekend that if the engagement issue wasn’t “fixed,” they would all lose their jobs as well.  (Emphasis mine)

Musk responded and the reporters stand by their reporting.  

 

UPDATE: On Feb 18 a report was published that has proof from data in it. 

 

Quote

Queensland University of Technology researcher Timothy Graham analyzed the data, which was pulled directly from Twitter's official API, and found that impressions on Musk's tweets were up 737 percent on Feb. 13, the day after the Super Bowl, shortly after the reported algorithm changes were made. In the days that followed, well after Musk's tweet acknowledged an algorithm issue, the daily impressions on Musk's tweets nearly tripled.

Elon Musk Attempts To Debunk Reporters But Twitter's Own Data Proves Him Wrong - Tech (mashable.com)

My thoughts

 

Musk responded the reporters stand by their reporting. Note Musk thinks that he knows who it was and is not denying it was said.  Given the observable effect on the feeds of all Twitter users ... like seeing his tweet with a Shiba Inu I am personally inclinded to believe the report.  This report confirms the observed reality on the ground.  

Say for example the quake in Turkey happened but official government sources denied there was a quake.  That would not negate the observed facts on the ground.  Journalism is publishing information that the powerful do not want published.  Anything else is PR.  I stand by the journalist who stand by their report.  Readers are free to not believe it. 

 

I stand by my laugh: 

  No there are not enough emojis for the amount of laughing at this.    

This would be like if Linus posted here on the reg then made sure his post came up first.  This is so childish from the richest man in the world.  I can't believe I once wanted to work for Space X.  OMG what.  

My serious thoughts on this are that this is a harbinger of how bad things can get when one person controls such a crucial platform.  A corporation that is traded needs to satisfy a broader base of investors.  So at least nothing too crazy can happen.  This is insane.  This is a person who has everything, money, power, space rockets and so on.  He can declare that a nation state can't use his satellites for communications and affect changes on the battlefield.  He has so much but the one thing he cannot buy is respect and adulation.  
Hilarious in the extreme. 
 

Updated thoughts. 

As your humble correspondent has other issues to attend to like teaching, doing science, and writing for a science oriented news source this slipped my mind. I make not apology for having other things to do.  

 

Sources

Musk Forced Algorithm Change to Help Boost His Tweets, Platformer Says (yahoo.com)

 

Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first (platformer.news)

Elon Musk Attempts To Debunk Reporters But Twitter's Own Data Proves Him Wrong - Tech (mashable.com)

 

[lewdicrous]

It's eating him alive..

[jaslion]

Knew this was gonna happen the second I heard from this lmao

 

Very soon I predict blocking advertizers will no longer be allowed and ooh boi is that gonna lead to some bad stuff

 

But man this guy is such a child all he has is money and the cruddy ability to throw it at stuff

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

Well, Mr Musk paid 44 billion dollars for his own personal Musk centric media platform. I see no problems with him making sure every users of his own platform sees his own toilette thought.

 

Personally I think that's basically a fairly expensive megaphone, but Mr Musk has more money than anyone could use in countless lifetimes, so why not building his hobby media megaphone boost platform?

It's his private thing. He can do with it as he pleases.

[da na]

"Man, Twitter really can't get any worse, can it?"

-Sorely mistaken person, 2021

[Needfuldoer]

6 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

Personally I think that's basically a fairly expensive megaphone, but Mr Musk has more money than anyone could use in countless lifetimes, so why not building his hobby media megaphone boost platform?

He paid a sum equal to $5.57 per human being currently alive on Earth to purchase Twitter. And this is what he got for the money:

 

 

[Poinkachu]

Now it'll be funny if someone hacked his account and posts d*ck pics... or you know, a slip of finger by the account's owner.

[jaslion]

14 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

Now it'll be funny if someone hacked his account and posts d*ck pics... or you know, a slip of finger by the account's owner.

It will only take time

 

Twitter is actively falling apart and service is breaking

 

Would not be surprised there are a couple groups already well into the system and just waiting to go even deeper before doing something

[Uttamattamakin]

39 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

Well, Mr Musk paid 44 billion dollars for his own personal Musk centric media platform. I see no problems with him making sure every users of his own platform sees his own toilette thought.

I do there is a limit to the It's a private platform argument.  In the US we call a big enough monopoly or oligopoly a "Trust".  He could violate US Anti-Trust laws.  AT&T used to be "The phone company".  All phone companies were just part of AT&T until it was broken up by such laws. 

 

Twitter being as important as it is being run by someone so childish would be cause for congressional hearings.   There already are hearings so it would not be hard. 

39 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

It's his private thing. He can do with it as he pleases.

Not really.  Right now that private entities former execs are answering to congress it is just a subpoena away from being Musk doing likewise. The New Abnormal Talks to Mike Masnick of Techdirt About Congressional Twitter Files Hearing (thedailybeast.com)

 

17 minutes ago, jaslion said:

It will only take time

 

Twitter is actively falling apart and service is breaking

 

Would not be surprised there are a couple groups already well into the system and just waiting to go even deeper before doing something

A while back Anonymous did post a tweet saying "expect us".  Since they are a name for hactivism by the same people, with the same skills as the engineers musk abuses... it would not be a surprise.    The praetorian guards were the biggest thread to the emperors of Rome at one point.   That is all speculation.  

What we know though is that this is crazy and hilarious. 

[Forbidden Wafer]

Well, he paid 44 billion USD for that thing. I'd say this is reasonable. If he had spent that much money on promoted posts, the result would be the same.

[Lurick]

1 hour ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

Well, Mr Musk paid 44 billion dollars for his own personal Musk centric media platform. I see no problems with him making sure every users of his own platform sees his own toilette thought.

 

Personally I think that's basically a fairly expensive megaphone, but Mr Musk has more money than anyone could use in countless lifetimes, so why not building his hobby media megaphone boost platform?

It's his private thing. He can do with it as he pleases.

It was a private thing before he bought it, yet people were all up in arms because they dared try to moderate the platform.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

30 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Twitter being as important as it is

Well, our society allows people like Rupert Murdoch to own a sizable percentage of the news industry.

And Musk did have to clear regulatory hurdles before Twitter's acquisition.
The due process was followed.
 

We can debate if ownership of media outlets should be allowed to be this concentrated in the hands of billionares, if Mr Musk should receive scrutiny for mischaracterizing his purchase and mission to such an extent, or if social media are too important not to become public services.

 

I also personally believe twitter to be a relatively tiny echo chamber, so personally I'm not worried Musk is using it as his plaything. It's been amusing seeing how Mr Musk believes twitter to be a tech company, while Twitter is a social media company whose core of the businness is in the moderation rules and compliance, not how the backend processes queries.

  

7 minutes ago, Lurick said:

It was a private thing before he bought it, yet people were all up in arms because they dared try to moderate the platform.

As far as I understand, the previous Twitter management had to moderate in order to get advertisers to pay for advertising on the platform. I rekon it's mutually exclusive to have unfettered free speech, and corporate advertising under the same roof. Mr. Musk will have to relearn a few lesson the hard way, as he balances moderation, cost of compliance and non compliance and advertising revenue. Maybe it's a fun learning experience for him.

[wanderingfool2]

So this is just another "rumor" of why with an "anonymous source".

 

Remember, it's also the press that brought you this wonderful gem
https://www.opindia.com/2022/10/prankster-conned-cnbc-ex-twitter-employee-fired-elon-musk-ligma-balls-meme-origin/

 

The article conveniently ignores the fact that people found that you get more impressions simply by switching your account to protected.  Specifically doing that doubled the impression count (as reported by other people).  The way I view it though, it's like when people discovered that subscribing to YouTube (pre-bell icon) that it wasn't recommending videos it thought you might not like (despite subscribing to the account).

 

My guess on what has happened, when the double the impression count was found out (Feb 1) there was a push to fix it.  Then it's realizing that it wasn't fixed after a few weeks asked why.

 

So even if one wants to believe the story of the "accounts" from employees; I think a more reasonable argument could be made that the following happened.  People notice you could get double the impressions by setting account to private, Musk tells engineers to fix it, engineers give excuse that his impression count is due to google (which looks like an excuse to justify the lower numbers without actually addressing the issue regarding the doubling), and now it's an attempt to see what impressions should be like.

 

Notice in the article that the claim is 90% of people who follow see the tweet...which really implies they filtered out tweets of people you follow (which for myself where I follow people who I want to see tweets of).

 

  

9 minutes ago, Lurick said:

It was a private thing before he bought it, yet people were all up in arms because they dared try to moderate the platform.

I'm pretty sure he is referring to it being a private company now, instead of a publicly traded company.  Publicly traded companies usually have to toe the line a lot more when it comes to certain aspects.

[Ripred]

He's like Tom from Myspace now  nomatter how many times you delete him Tom is always there for you

 

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

The one thing he can never be is qualified to run because our founding fathers, peace be upon them, saw the danger of people like him over 200 years away...and made it a requirement one be naturally born a citizen of the United States to hold that office. 

I mean... it's not like you can't be an egomaniacal billionaire if you're an american... nor like such people haven't become potus in the recent past.

10 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

So this is just another "rumor" of why with an "anonymous source".

That's how a lot of journalism works. Insiders can't make their name known for obvious reasons. What else could they do to prove this to you? Neither Musk nor Twitter have officially denied this to my knowledge and it just so happens that, right after the engineer firing news, Musk's tweets are being force fed to everyone. Don't you think it's a bit too coincidental for the story to be made up?

 

And honestly even if it were a coincidence and some weird mistake by which THE OWNER'S TWEETS just so happened to be the ones bombarding everyone's timeline it would still be extremely embarassing and a display of terrible management.

18 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

So even if one wants to believe the story of the "accounts" from employees; I think a more reasonable argument could be made that the following happened.  People notice you could get double the impressions by setting account to private, Musk tells engineers to fix it, engineers give excuse that his impression count is due to google (which looks like an excuse to justify the lower numbers without actually addressing the issue regarding the doubling), and now it's an attempt to see what impressions should be like.

Then why isn't Biden blowing up people's timelines in the same way?

[wanderingfool2]

24 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Then why isn't Biden blowing up people's timelines in the same way?

Ignore the last bit why don't you, regarding that it could be changes to see what it should look like.

 

He literally uses his account to experiment and test with.  His account was set to private for a full day to test engagements (because again, people found it's double).  It's literally being able to test at scale (instead of simulating the load on the back-end).

 

Do you think it's not coincidental that things like this are happening right after someone figured out they got double the engagement from setting your feed to protected

[Uttamattamakin]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

So this is just another "rumor" of why with an "anonymous source".

It's not a rumor.  I'm sorry but reporting only on things released in corporate press releases is not news it's PR and reported in multiple reputable sources that have checked themselves.   I find it very interesting how first party information from corporate sources is NEVER questioned here yet news reporting that does not prop up the powerful is treated as suspect. 

Plus people can observer the change themselves if they use Twitter themselves.   This has two sources. Nice try. Thanks for playing.  

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

My guess on what has happened, when the double the impression count was found out (Feb 1) there was a push to fix it.  Then it's realizing that it wasn't fixed after a few weeks asked why.

 

That's not what happened though.  

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

Notice in the article that the claim is 90% of people who follow see the tweet...which really implies they filtered out tweets of people you follow (which for myself where I follow people who I want to see tweets of).

 

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I'm pretty sure he is referring to it being a private company now, instead of a publicly traded company.  Publicly traded companies usually have to toe the line a lot more when it comes to certain aspects.

This is true.  There is no singular boss who can walk in demand something Howard Hughes level crazy and have the power to fire people at will if they object. 

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

I mean... it's not like you can't be an egomaniacal billionaire if you're an american... nor like such people haven't become potus in the recent past.

Were' Ok with our own billionaires and Millionaires being president.  So long as they are over 35 and natural born US citizens who can get enough electoral votes.  Thankfully love em or not everyone who has held the office has loved America as a people, a landmass and a constitutional republic.  If anything a few have loved it like a abusive husband loves their wife.  

OK NO POL HERE.  Lets hug it out. 

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

That's how a lot of journalism works. Insiders can't make their name known for obvious reasons. What else could they do to prove this to you? Neither Musk nor Twitter have officially denied this to my knowledge and it just so happens that, right after the engineer firing news, Musk's tweets are being force fed to everyone. Don't you think it's a bit too coincidental for the story to be made up?

Exactly.  It frustrates me and I am sure any active thread starters on this part of the forum to have people question real news reported by third party news sources.  While corporate press releases which should never be taken at face value or called  are not questioned.   First party information, what a person or entitiy with a vested interst says about itself VS third party reporting confirmed with two independent first party sources.   That is the best journalistic information we can have.  

News outlets do not always get things right but they do their best and thread starters here do our best... Especially given we do it for free and for fun.  

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

 

And honestly even if it were a coincidence and some weird mistake by which THE OWNER'S TWEETS just so happened to be the ones bombarding everyone's timeline it would still be extremely embarassing and a display of terrible management.

Totally agree. 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

Then why isn't Biden blowing up people's timelines in the same way?

You didn't ask me Biden and men of his level don't really need social media.  Even the last social media user in chief now seems to get that Twitter while important still is not as important as the word of a politician.  At their level they can issue a press release or call a press conference and it will be spread.  No single platform can really silence them or give them a voice. 

 

[Uttamattamakin]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Ignore the last bit why don't you, regarding that it could be changes to see what it should look like.

 

He literally uses his account to experiment and test with.  His account was set to private for a full day to test engagements (because again, people found it's double).  It's literally being able to test at scale (instead of simulating the load on the back-end).

 

Do you think it's not coincidental that things like this are happening right after someone figured out they got double the engagement from setting your feed to protected

The thing is we have confirmed news reports that say this.  Now if Twitter comes out and tries to explain this I will in good faith post their response here just as news reporters who reach out to Twitter for comment do likewise. 

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

The thing is we have confirmed news reports that say this.  Now if Twitter comes out and tries to explain this I will in good faith post their response here just as news reporters who reach out to Twitter for comment do likewise. 

It's injecting pure speculation though based on "anonymous sources". 

 

Like honestly, around Feb 1 it came to light that there was a problem regarding showing current tweets to people (when you compare protected vs public accounts).  So it's a reasonable assumption that it would be getting looked into.

 

The news article even on the second paragraph talks about an internal memo which literally talks about debugging engagement.  So yea, less likely about the whining "I want more viewers" and more likely about "Why is engagement so messed up".  Again, you need to view it in light of the fact that this was started when a person tested "engagement" and found sending out a protected tweet got twice as many views (to which was replied roughly along the lines of that shouldn't be happening lets test and fix it).

 

So it is clear that they were looking at engagements and trying to figure things out (which yes, does likely mean messing around with some stuff live and potentially breaking a few things while it is getting fixed)

 

  

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

That's not what happened though.  

You can look for yourself.  It happened around Feb 1.  So it is highly important to note that there was an issue with engagements and it showing tweets to people who followed.  Don't believe me

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/musk-goes-private-on-twitter-to-test-if-locked-tweets-get-more-views/

 

[Uttamattamakin]

10 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's injecting pure speculation though based on "anonymous sources". 

It's not speculation.  It is claims in reliable media sources and they confirm the observable effect that has been had on Twitter.    Don't shoot the messenger.   Also I'm not really sure what you want from me for a mere forum post.  Shall I gain access to Twitters servers, mine their code and show the commands ran to make it happen? 

 

[NF-A12x25]

elon musk truly is the dumbest man alive

[Zodiark1593]

6 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

Well, Mr Musk paid 44 billion dollars for his own personal Musk centric media platform. I see no problems with him making sure every users of his own platform sees his own toilette thought.

 

Personally I think that's basically a fairly expensive megaphone, but Mr Musk has more money than anyone could use in countless lifetimes, so why not building his hobby media megaphone boost platform?

It's his private thing. He can do with it as he pleases.

Funny thing. If I earned a dollar for literally every second I’ve ever been alive ($3600/hour), I’d be close to, but not quite at, billionaire status, as of this writing. 
 

Putting these numbers in computer context makes it easy to forget how ridiculously large a Billion is. 

[wanderingfool2]

36 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

It's not speculation.  It is claims in reliable media sources and they confirm the observable effect that has been had on Twitter.    Don't shoot the messenger.   Also I'm not really sure what you want from me for a mere forum post.  Shall I gain access to Twitters servers, mine their code and show the commands ran to make it happen? 

 

Define "reliable media sources", when it comes to things surrounding Musk and his companies though.  The fact is all that has been shown is that they are changing the way engagements are happening.  You can't conclude that "bigger than the President" type of claim.  Again before the news of all this broke, it was clear that they were starting to look into engagements.  Plus you injected politics by referencing not being able to run and how it's a good thing that he can't.

 

When most news sites decides to jump on one source and just parrot what they are saying, can one really call things reliable.

If you want a perfect example, look at the following stories from an April 17 crash (which NHTSA confirmed autopilot was NOT active, and after the accident Tesla stated it wasn't active...yet "anonymous sources", eye witness accounts confirmed it was active)

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/28/cars/tesla-texas-crash-autopilot/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/19/tesla-texas-driverless-crash/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/18/no-one-was-driving-in-tesla-crash-that-killed-two-men-in-spring-texas-report.html

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-probes-fatal-tesla-crash-believed-be-driverless-2021-04-19/

 

All that can really be said is that Twitter is attempting changes with engagements (and btw the most recent Barack Obama tweet had a surge in views compared to the last few weeks, given roughly the same amount of followers).  Unless some of the "anonymous" sources identify or provide actual emails (instead of hearsay) then it's just a rumor.

 

Your conclusion and the articles conclusion is that he's doing it essentially because he's just petty, when there is actual evidence showing that they were working on engagements prior to the so call "incident" that lead to the recent change.

[staticpage]

Only started using twitter because Elon Musk owns it, I didn't even know the President of the United States of America had an account if the media was open a fair why would he even need to tweet?

 

If you don't like it move on to another platform and please remember to boycott all his stuff. More Teslas and starlink bandwidth for the rest of us.

[Lurick]

55 minutes ago, staticpage said:

Only started using twitter because Elon Musk owns it, I didn't even know the President of the United States of America had an account if the media was open a fair why would he even need to tweet?

 

If you don't like it move on to another platform and please remember to boycott all his stuff. More Teslas and starlink bandwidth for the rest of us.

So the current and past two presidents have had twitter accounts since twitter was a thing, you know that right? This isn't some "media bias bad, libruls stealing my freedumbs" horseshit, it's a way to communicate and connect with people on a larger scale.