Ruminations: Twitter On The Fly

"Nearly four months into Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter, one of the most influential social media websites has been transformed into a mercurial billionaire's personal sandbox."
"Twitter users knew the site would change under Musk, who purchased the company in October for US$44 billion and installed himself as CEO on a promise of restoring 'free speech."
"What many underestimated was the extent to which Musk would make wholesale changes with the potential to disrupt the experience across the site for his own benefit."
Faiz Siddiqui and Jeremy B. Merrill, San Francisco

Elon Musk ordered employees to email him a summary of what their software code has “achieved” in the past six months, “along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code." Reuters

It was reported on Platformer that Twitter has undergone major algorithmic changes on Musk's orders. The result is that some users now see the tweets posted by Musk before any others. Evidently Elon Musk was concerned that his viewer engagement was in decline. This new fix ensured that Musk's tweets would be pushed to the top of many Tweeters' feeds.

According to a new feature that displays view counts rolled out late last year, Musk's tweets were driving massive engagement; over a billion views on December 18, as an example. The Twitter owner's tweets on a typical day in December were shown 231 million times. When that number dropped significantly in the new year that they were shown only 137 million times on a typical day the wealthiest man in the world was rather disturbed.

After all, if such immense wealth cannot buy focus loyalty, what can? Well, money can achieve miracles; from this week when his posts were artificially boosted he's back in business with around 400 million views per day. Musk, as many might be aware, and many might not care, is a prolific Twitterer. His healthy ego spurs him to tweet whatever's on his mind.

With close to 130 million followers, he has quite an admiring Twitter retinue, one of the most popular site users. When he expressed an interest in acquiring Twitter back in April of 2022, he stated his wish to restore 'free speech' and to solve the persistence of spam and bots. Several former Twitter employees with direct knowledge of his prioritized issues revealed that changes initiated by Musk frequently were geared to improving his own user experience.

His imperative clearly was to 'improve' his personal experience on the site. Since his takeover as CEO of the Twitter social media site major changes include several directly benefiting Musk, according to former employees ... with little potential upside for the legion of Twitter users. "Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying 'parody' will be permanently suspended'; a new policy posted by Musk on November 6.

"I remember people on our team thinking he's having a very personal experience unique to him on the platform."
"Our impression was just that he was describing his very specific experience as a Twitter users and Elon Musk is not a typical Twitter user."
Anony7mous former Twitter employee

While in Qatar for the World Cup Final, a policy banning the promotion of other social media sites on Twitter, such as Instagram was posted, along with prohibiting users from pushing links to competing sites like Mastadon. A swift backlash followed from those pointing out the new policy flouted free speech, Despite Musk's own stated conviction that it must be upheld. A day later, Musk backed down.

Then came a poll asking whether he should stand down as CEO of Twitter. Respondents voted yes in the majority, leading Musk to commit to finding a replacement. No clear candidate has yet emerged. Musk announced at an international summit he likely would require to the end of 2023 to find a successor in the Twitter CEO role.

“I think Elon Musk is a visionary. Almost singlehandedly, he’s changed the way Americans think about automobiles. I have a Tesla and love it."
"That said, he’s been a terrible fit for Twitter. He appears to be making it up as he goes along.”
Stephen King, Horror novelist