Elon Musk, obsessed with how his Twitter engagement rate has plummeted, reportedly fired an engineer who attempted to explain that the reason his account’s stats have declined is because public interest in his antics has waned.
The Twitter CEO has been preoccupied with the number of people who view his posts. Last week, he made his account private for a day to see if it would increase the amount of his audience, after Several popular right-wing accounts with whom Musk communicates complained that recent adjustments to Twitter had decreased their reach.
Musk assembled a group of engineers and advisors in a room at Twitter’s headquarters on Tuesday to seek answers.
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“This is ridiculous,” he said, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting. “I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”
One of the company’s two surviving key engineers suggested a possible explanation for Musk’s dwindling reach: public interest in Musk’s antics is waning little under a year after the Tesla CEO made his unexpected attempt to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
Engineers previously studied whether Musk’s reach had been purposely limited, but discovered no evidence that the algorithm was prejudiced against him.
“You’re fired, you’re fired,” Musk told the engineer, relayed by the latter–whose identity is withheld–to the Platformer.
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According to one current employee, Musk is dissatisfied with engineers’ efforts thus far and has directed them to count how many times each of his tweets is suggested.
A Twitter user by the handle @jdan relayed that he was the engineer who got fired, saying his 6.5-year tenure at the tech firm has just ended.
“Proud of the work we did and have full confidence the three or four people left will be able to honor Elon’s requests to artificially inflate his view counts (and view counts for advertisers). Not me though,” he tweeted.
The account, however, is labeled a parody one by the social media platform.
Dorsey joins Twitter competitor
Meanwhile, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey meanwhile has moved to a new decentralized social network called Nostr and is using it to criticize Musk. When Twitter had hours-long technical issues on Wednesday, Dorsey vented on Nostr.
“Used to be when anything went down, people went to Twitter to talk about it. Now look,” Dorsey posted on his Nostr profile.
Dorsey’s remarks are noteworthy because the two executives appear to have had a cordial relationship, and the Twitter co-founder initially applauded Musk’s acquisition. On the day Twitter accepted the acquisition deal last year, Dorsey stated, “Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.”
A decentralized social network is also what Musk imagines Twitter would evolve into, touting many times the plans to transform it into an everything “X” app, which includes financial and blockchain mechanisms.
Twitter is scrambling to increase its revenue streams as it pays for the acquisition price tag Musk offered. Recently, Twitter has announced that it will start charging for access to the Twitter API beginning February 9.
Information for this story was found via The Wall Street Journal, Platformer, and the sources mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
