As Platformer reported, site engineers at Twitter are tasked to boost the visibility of Elon Musk’s tweets for all the people who’re not following him – through the For You feed.
This comes after the US President’s tweet supporting Philadelphia Eagles garnered a record viewership, triggering Musk’s company to highlight their boss through a tweaked code of the platform.
Tweaking Twitter For Visibility Boost
We all know how affectionate Twitter is for Elon Musk – leading the billionaire businessman to buy it for $44 billion for just being his favorite social media platform. Though he’s revamping it in multiple ways to better the experience for users – he may also be tweaking it for his own causes!
As Platformer reported, Twitter engineers have pushed a customized algorithm to boost the visibility of Elon Musk’s tweets – through the For You Feed. This was the result of President Biden’s tweet supporting the Philadelphia Eagles garnering over 29 million views on Sunday – triggering the platform management to do something to highlight their boss above the President!
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
It’s reported that Elon’s cousin and Twitter employee James Musk had sent an urgent message on the company’s Slack on Monday morning, stating, “We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform,” while calling the situation “high urgency”.
He asked anyone who can code to chip in – and make a custom algorithm for Twitter that alone boosts Elon Musk’s tweets to his followers. Before doing so, around 80 Twitter employees were tasked to investigate the possible reasons for Musk’s falling engagement numbers – where they included the possibility that a lot of users had blocked and muted him in recent months.
And since this wasn’t convincing, the team tweaked the platform to benefit Musk’s voice – as much as 1,000x! This resulted in over 90% of the users following Elon Musk viewing all his tweets at the top of their For You Feed.
Well, the big boss acknowledged this change and asked people to stay tuned while Twitter made adjustments to the “algorithm” that may not promote his presence this aggressively. While it’s unknown how these “Adjustments” work – we expect fewer restrictions for Musk anyway.
Thus, the only way you may avoid him is by not following him and shifting to the Following tab for viewing only the tweets of people whom you’re following.
