Elon Musk bid everything that was at stake to acquire Twitter! From selling Tesla’s stocks to debt funding, he put his everything to fund the $44 billion deal. However, it was not a smooth sailing deal for the billionaire. Even after the completion of the deal, he had to deal with the complications that the buyout created. He had to make some tough decisions, but he went radical with them.
When he acquired the company, the advertisers pulled out their advertisements which affected Twitter’s primary revenue source. It hampered the finances of Twitter. Due to financial dwindling, he started firing employees in November 2022 and it continues. He recently fired an engineer due to low Twitter engagement. A news portal informed that Musk artificially boosted his tweets making them appear on the ‘For You’ feed. However, he has refuted the claims threatening to sue the employee who was the source of the portal.
Related: Why Is Twitter Just Showing Tweets Of Elon Musk On ‘For You’ Feed?
Elon Musk Refuses To Have Artificially Boosted His Tweets
It had been a field day for Elon Musk to revamp Twitter into a “digital square of democracy”. He has taken radical steps in changing user interfaces and policies at the microblogging site. When he was one of the important shareholders at Twitter, he has been pressing Jack Dorsey and others to improve the impressions and ads on Twitter. Recently, it seems that impression gain is a very personal affair for the new CEO.
Elon reprimanded an engineer for the low engagement on his account despite 100 million followers. His score was reduced from “100” in April 2022 when he announced the Twitter deal to “nine”. When the engineer displayed statistics in front of him and showed no signs of external infiltration to reduce his impression, he fired him.
Twitter users saw a surge of Elon Musk tweets on their feeds. A news portal Platformer reported that Elon Musk employed his engineer to artificially boost his tweets after his tweet during the Super Bowl received low ratings. He allegedly made a comparison with the impressions of President Joe Biden’s tweet supporting the Philadelphia Eagles.
Now, he has reacted to the above-mentioned report by tweeting, “The ‘source’ of the bogus Platformer article is a disgruntled employee who had been on paid time off for months, had already accepted a job at Google, and felt the need to poison the well on the way out. Twitter will be taking legal action against him”. He refuted any claims to have artificially boosted the tweets. He suggested that there was a bug that made replies prominent like primary tweets which is now fixed.
In Case You Missed: Elon Musk Fires An Engineer Over The Declining Twitter Engagement
The Journalists At The Platformer Stood By Their Reports
In a tweet on February 17th, 2023, Elon Musk wrote, “Several major media sources incorrectly reported that my Tweets were boosted above normal levels earlier this week”. He also called ‘Platformer’s’ article “bogus”.
The two primary journalists at the portal tweeted their reactions. Casey Newton shared the picture of Musk’s tweet writing, “This is completely false. We stand by our reporting”. Zoë Schiffer also wrote, “This is…completely false. We stand by our reporting”.
Platformer reported that James Musk, the Tesla owner’s cousin, asked the engineers to look into a bug hampering Elon’s tweets impressions. The engineers started inspecting the problem at their hands.
He was angry that his Philadelphia Eagles tweet got 29 million impressions at the time of reporting and Biden’s tweet got 9.1 million impressions. The engineers, as per the report, boosted his tweets to 1,000 factors using the “power user multiplier”, which will only apply to his tweets.
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