Twitter is Currently Showing Elon Musk’s Tweets to More Eyeballs

If you’ve noticed that Twitter’s algorithm has been making tweets from CEO Elon Musk more visible than usual, you’re not alone. As reported by The Verge, Twitter’s algorithmic “For You” feed seems to be showing Elon Musk’s tweets and replies to many users, even those who don’t follow the CEO of Twitter.

This is something that I can notice on my own “For You” feed as well. As of this writing, the two top tweets there are tweets from Elon Musk, and I can also see many replies from the Twitter CEO as I scroll down. A couple of minutes ago, Musk tweeted that Twitter was making adjustments to its “algorithm,” seemingly acknowledging that something was wrong.

Please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh .… “algorithm”

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 14, 2023

Over the weekend, Musk tweeted that Twitter’s recommendation algorithm had been updated to address an issue that was “causing accounts with many followers to be dumped.” Musk also pointed out that 95% of his tweets were “not getting delivered at all”.

This came after Platformer reported that Elon Musk had just fired a Twitter engineer over an argument about Musk’s engagement numbers on Twitter being on the decline. “Dissatisfied with engineers’ work so far, Musk has instructed employees to track how many times each of his tweets are recommended,” Platformer learned from a current Twitter employee.

Did Twitter later tweak its algorithm to give Elon Musk’s tweets a boost? We don’t know for sure, but let’s not forget that Musk’s big idea for Twitter before he acquired the company was to open source its algorithm to promote transparency and free speech. To quote Musk’s words, this would guarantee that “there’s no sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation, either algorithmically or manually.”