On Monday, the chances are the first tweet at the very top of your Twitter timeline was from Elon Musk. That was not a bug or some malfunction from an increasingly glitchy social media platform. That was what Elon Musk wanted, and what he made Twitter engineers do all night and all morning after the Super Bowl. As it turns out, Musk got his diaper-baby feelings hurt when Joe Biden’s Super Bowl tweet did bigger numbers than Musk’s Super Bowl tweet. So Musk called an emergency at Twitter HQ and had them alter the algorithm. Because Elon Musk spent $44 billion to *force* people to see his dumb f–king tweets.
At 2:36 on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers.
“We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform,” wrote Musk, a cousin of the Twitter CEO, tagging “@here” in Slack to ensure that anyone online would see it. “Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.”
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.
In the wake of those losses — the Eagles to the Kansas City Chiefs, and Musk to the president of the United States — Twitter’s CEO flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team.
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.
That Platformer article has even more pathetic detail about Musk’s obsession with his tweets’ low-engagement numbers as Twitter users have, en masse, been ignoring him and muting him for months. Musk threatened to fire anyone who told him that he is simply unpopular and uncool, and he seriously tasked over 80 Twitter engineers with solely promoting his tweets on everyone’s timeline. The new algorithm “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.” A more pathetic, juvenile dumbass would be hard to find.
Of course Biden’s tweet got more engagement! He’s the president! And it’s cute!
As your president, I’m not picking favorites.
But as Jill Biden’s husband, fly Eagles, fly. https://t.co/YtgaEC83Qj
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 13, 2023
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- Heidi Klum’s 21st Annual Halloween Party Presented By Now Screaming x Prime Video And Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur At Sake No Hana At Moxy Lower East Side Featuring: Elon Musk Where: New York, New York, United States When: 31 Oct 2022 Credit: BauerGriffin/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images
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- Heidi Klum’s 21st Annual Halloween Party Presented By Now Screaming x Prime Video And Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur At Sake No Hana At Moxy Lower East Side Featuring: Elon Musk Where: New York, New York, United States When: 31 Oct 2022 Credit: BauerGriffin/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images
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- Heidi Klum’s 21st Annual Halloween Party Presented By Now Screaming x Prime Video And Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur At Sake No Hana At Moxy Lower East Side Featuring: Elon Musk Where: New York, New York, United States When: 31 Oct 2022 Credit: ROGER WONG/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images
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- Heidi Klum’s 21st Annual Halloween Party Presented By Now Screaming x Prime Video And Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur At Sake No Hana At Moxy Lower East Side Featuring: Elon Musk Where: New York, New York, United States When: 31 Oct 2022 Credit: ROGER WONG/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images
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- FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 final match between France v Argentina held at Lusail Stadium Featuring: Elon Musk Where: Doha, Qatar, Qatar When: 18 Dec 2022 Credit: David Niviere/ABACA/INSTARimages/Cover Images **North America Rights Only**
I’d block if I had twitter.
And go Joe Biden. Thanks for all the good things he’s doing but what the media is not talking about, because they’re too busy making up lies to polarize people even more.
You can mute/block Elon, but his tweets still get pushed to your notifications.
I unfollowed and muted Elon months ago and it has worked for me. I hardly ever see his tweets. And if that didn’t work, I’d definitely block him
I blocked him in November and its been very nice
I have a bolt hole over at Counter.social, which is always nice to visit.
But on Twitter, I got the muskrat blocked AND muted. Once in awhile some of his foolishness shows up on my feed, but usually because someone shares it or a screen grab of it. I am holding block parties more often than I used to though because of his mucking around with the bird app.
Wouldn’t it be better if you get a Twitter account and ratio Musk’s stupid tweets? I don’t follow him but every time I see a tweet of his in my feed I insult him just enough not to get banned. You have to keep an eye on the enemy not ignore him.
Best way to mute/block the man-baby is to block twitter.
He is mentally ill and he is exhausting
I’ve blocked muskrat about 5 times and yet, he’s still there. You know who’s NOT on Spoutible… muskrat
That’s really odd. Unfollowing and muting worked for me! I’d have thought blocking was even more forceful
Blocking him worked for me too. Did it about a month ago and he’s blessedly gone. But tbh I barley look at twitter any more since he screwed up the feed.
Musk gives me strong Kim Jong-un vibes.
This is reminding me of why I left Twitter. What Musk wants is engagement — he doesn’t care if what you’re saying about him is positive or negative, his eye is on the numbers. I deactivated my account when I realized that just being on the platform was helping him. And I still hear more about him than I want to.
He’s trying to play off this latest move as funny, with the being-forced-to-drink-milk meme he posted. I guess no one is able to tell him that making a “joke” about being pathetically needy and manipulative doesn’t disguise the underlying pathology.
I left Twitter when he posted something about prosecuting Fauci. I couldn’t trust the sources anymore and didn’t want to support Musk in any way. The only way he will learn is if people leave.
Someone on Mastodon was trying to get people to quit en masse on March 15, call it the “Ides of Musk.” I hope that goes off.
God, what an attention whore.
He made the binding offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion in a fit of pique. That he’s been destroying the app in cascading fits of pique is not surprising.
I maintain that Elon is this generation’s Howard Hughes. His life will spiral into increasing paranoid obsession & weirdness while he lights cash on fire.
Musk is so pathetic. How fragile his ego is. Imagine making all these folks work crazy hours so he could look good. Smdh
I blocked him the very first time I saw a tweet from him. I have heard he has been unblocking himself on people’s feeds but I have not seen any of his tweets since I blocked him
He thinks he is equal to President and First Lady of the United States of America. One who has been known as Jilly from Philly.
Of course he does.
Blocked his racist, homophobic, transphobic ass months ago. I didn’t see his tweet, but I heard about it. Lord, what a pathetic, little man.
Don’t get it. He’s like the Royal family members living (not H&M) in the uk, how much money or assets do you need to acquire before you (should rightly) bog off into obscurity and stop annoying the public?
Is it because he thinks he should be able to buy anything/anyone and has a melt down when that doesn’t happen?
His cousin works there? Ye gods…
I remember that giant baby Boh from Spirited Away when I read about Elon. He’s not well. The people that surround him are compromised. And eventually, that combination will overtake the rest (the talent, the creativity, etc.). The money and power is proving to be quite poisonous.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if all the remaining engineers change the algorithm so that Musky gets put on the lowest rung, and then they all quit or get fired and Musk has no way to undo the algorithm. Ah, a girl can dream.
For awhile I kept reading about how bad the working conditions were at the Twitter headquarters, that the surviving employees were basically having to live there, like proper wage slaves. I kept waiting for the local officials to do something about it, but nada.
His remaining engineers will be dropping him. Those engineers are fielding
offers everyday via LinkedIn. They are in control in the job market. They can call their own shots. I’ve worked with engineers since the late 90s. They are rock stars. They’re going to jump this sinking ship.
As we all know Twitter is an unstable company. Since Muskrat assumed the dictator for life position he has hollowed Twitter out. I can’t imagine those $8 certification fees are producing much profit.
His antics are also jeopardizing Tesla. Tesla stocks lost 65% of their value in 2022. 700 billion dollars. Tesla is losing its exclusivity in the EV market.
Muskrat is no longer the majority shareholder. He lost it when he dumped Tesla stock to buy Twitter. Vanguard bought more stocks; they own 10.3% . Rat only owns 9.1. Jack Dorsey (former CEO of Twitter) is the only other individual shareholder. The rest are financial institutions. They can shit can Rat at any time & hire a competent CEO’s.
I’ll be taking my schadenfreude with a shot of Patron, shrimp cocktail & a swordfish steak.