Following reports that Twitter users’ For You feeds were flooded with Elon Musk posts, we now know why the platform suddenly started pushing its owner to so many people: Musk’s Super Bowl tweet got fewer impressions than U.S. President Joe Biden.
Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton detailed Twitter’s new Musk-oriented algorithm in the latest Platformer newsletter based on interviews with people familiar with the events, as well as through documents obtained by Platformer. It started early Monday morning — 2:36am, specifically. Musk’s cousin, James Musk, posted a message in Twitter’s Slack with an ‘@here’ tag to notify everyone. The message sought help debugging an “issue with engagement across the platform” that was “high urgency.”
Except, the so-called emergency was a quintessentially Elon Musk problem. Musk tweeted support for the Philadelphia Eagles in the big game, generating some 9.1 million impressions before Musk deleted the tweet (apparently out of frustration for the low view count, not because the Eagles lost, as some previously surmised).
Biden’s tweet, also in support of the Eagles, generated 29 million impressions.
Platformer reports that Musk flew back to the San Francisco Bay Area Sunday night in his private jet to demand answers about the low impressions. This, ultimately, led to the changes that put Musk’s tweets at the forefront of Twitter users’ feeds.
It’s worth noting as well that it was the latest event in an ongoing saga of Musk obsessing with engagement on his tweets. Previously, Musk reportedly fired an engineer who offered a potential explanation for his declining impressions. Platformer reports that Musk’s deputies told the rest of the engineering team over the weekend that they would also lose their jobs if the engagement issues wasn’t “fixed.”
The fix involved changing Twitter’s systems to boost Musk’s tweets
Musk addressed his team late Sunday, with some 80 people pulled in to work on the project. Fixing Musk’s engagement had become priority number one, and employees worked through the night investigating the issue (if only Musk had put as much effort into the other top priorities he’s claimed to have).
Per Platformer, engineers suggested that Musk’s reach could have been reduced because a large number of users have blocked or muted him in recent months. They also found a technical reason for the issue. Twitter typically promotes tweets from users whose posts perform well to both followers and non-followers in the For You feed — engineers estimated that Musk’s tweets should have fit that model but were only showing up about half as often as they should.
The problem was fixed by Monday afternoon, and Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, according to Platformer. This meant Musk’s tweets would bypass Twitter filters that were designed to show people the best content possible and that the algorithm artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 — that score ensured his tweets ranked higher than others in the feed.
Moreover, the change allowed Musk’s account to bypass Twitter heuristics that would otherwise prevent a single account from flooding the For You feed.
This all explains the deluge of Musk’s tweets filling up people’s For You pages over the last couple of days. An internal estimate said that over 90 percent of Musk’s followers now see his tweets. It also resulted in an uproar from users, leading Musk to tweet about making adjustments to the algorithm. Platformer reports that the artificial boost is still in place, but the factor has been reduced from 1,000.
Additionally, Platformer notes that views for Musk’s tweets still fluctuate significantly, at least as counted by Twitter. (There are many reasons to doubt the accuracy of Twitter’s view counts, but there isn’t better information to work with.) But rather than contend with the fact that some of his tweets aren’t good, Musk pressured Twitter to show his tweets to almost everyone to keep view counts up. Faced with the threat of losing their jobs, Twitter employees made it happen.
Source: Platformer.
