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Elons reply “I only learned about it now!”. What a crock of shit. We literally went through reporting a few months back where he was clearly instructing the tea

Elons reply “I only learned about it now!”. What a crock of shit. We literally went through reporting a few months back where he was clearly instructing the team to make sure his tweets always come up, for everyone.

GuB-42 4y ago
I think it was more narcissistic than that. As in: "My tweets are very important, if they don't show up on top, it means the algorithm can't recognize what is important, it needs to be fixed". And the team, who probably didn't see in which way Elon Musk's tweets could be that important besides the fact that he wrote them, they just decided to give Elon Musk's tweets a boost.
- takeda 4y ago
  The most hilarious things to me was when I was reading some (unrelated to this drama tweet) posted in an article and the top recommendation was Musk's tweet that he doesn't artificially promote his tweets.
- sawyna 4y ago
  Now someone is surely getting fired.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- masklinn 4y ago
  From what I understand of upthread, it doesn't "give elon musk's tweets a boost", rather any change which downgrades musk's visibility is considered a regression. Obviously the end result is similarly that musk's visibility can never decrease, but it's a more technical (and to the letter) compliance with the specifications.
- edwiecron 4y ago
  Sounds like you are reading minds here.
cubefox 4y ago
> We literally went through reporting a few months back where he was clearly instructing the team to make sure his tweets always come up, for everyone. Feel free to give me a source for that, but I'm pretty sure that's not true.
- slim 4y ago
  looks like evolve2k is himself the source. maybe he was a twitter employee ?
  - icehawk 4y ago
    ah cool thanks for figuring out they were the source of https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-boosted-elon-musk-tweets-over-biden-super-bowl-report-2023-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-boosted-elon-musk-tw...
  - evolve2k 4y ago
    While it was thrilling for a moment to imagine myself as a disgruntled former Twitter staff member, that is not the case and I have not been employed there. My statement above was to read ’we’ as in as the tech community not ‘we’ Twitter staff; others have quoted some of the sources on this thread, but it was definitively reported by a few different outlets at the time.
- csb6 4y ago
  It was widely reported in the days following the Super Bowl that he personally ordered his Tweets be boosted after a Tweet by Biden got more engagement than his similar Tweet [0]. As far as I can tell, he did not instruct Twitter employees to make his Tweets appear to all users, but he did want them to make his posts appear in timelines significantly more often. This lead to reports of users suddenly getting their timelines flooded with lots of his Tweets. It seems like there was a rush within Twitter to raise Musk’s engagement numbers by altering the recommendation algorithm to specifically boost posts from his accounts. The special boost factor was later reduced, but allegedly still exists. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets-algorithm-changes-twitter https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets...
that_guy_iain 4y ago
If I remember correctly, he noticed that his account with 100,000,000 plus followers was only getting 40,000 or so views. This lead to a Twitter engineer saying maybe his content wasn't interesting enough to get views and getting fired. And later on Musk said that they found a bug in the fanout system because his account was so big it basically broke things and they fixed it. I remember everyone agreeing with the Twitter engineer who said maybe his content wasn't interesting enough, while to me that seemed odd. If people follow an account and they tweet and they're online they should have a high chance of seeing that tweet. That's the entire point of following someone. If someone I've followed tweets something I would like to see it.
- RF_Savage 4y ago
  The fanout bug was in weighting how blocks affect visibility and fanout. Apparently it was an absolute and not a relative thing, so the huge amount of blocks musk has affected their visibility.
- coldcode 4y ago
  You don't, at least for me, I have 5700 followers and most posts (with art) only see 200-500 impressions, whereas a year ago I was getting 3000 on average. The Following tab is clearly (at least for me) not in timeline order, so most of my followers never even know I posted anything. Since I post art most of my followers are artists, so you would think they would see them. Impressions (which are Twitter putting tweets in a timeline so that people scroll by them) are not under the control of the poster. Likes per impression for me are up, so interaction is higher which is supposed to increase how often tweets are shown, but only timely retweets seem to help any. I am trying to figure out how the algorithm decides on what to show in the Following tab, but the code is way too big to analyze without being able to run it and look at logging/metrics/stats.
dudeinjapan 4y ago
Yeah but presumably he didn't think the devs would tag a specific metric for "elon", which would later be open-sourced. It's one of those things that makes more sense in retrospect...
- killingtime74 4y ago
  Should have called him "Big E" to obfuscate
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    "The big guy", it's foolproof!

GuB-42 4y ago

I think it was more narcissistic than that. As in: "My tweets are very important, if they don't show up on top, it means the algorithm can't recognize what is important, it needs to be fixed". And the team, who probably didn't see in which way Elon Musk's tweets could be that important besides the fact that he wrote them, they just decided to give Elon Musk's tweets a boost.

takeda 4y ago
The most hilarious things to me was when I was reading some (unrelated to this drama tweet) posted in an article and the top recommendation was Musk's tweet that he doesn't artificially promote his tweets.
sawyna 4y ago
Now someone is surely getting fired.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
masklinn 4y ago
From what I understand of upthread, it doesn't "give elon musk's tweets a boost", rather any change which downgrades musk's visibility is considered a regression. Obviously the end result is similarly that musk's visibility can never decrease, but it's a more technical (and to the letter) compliance with the specifications.
edwiecron 4y ago
Sounds like you are reading minds here.

cubefox 4y ago

> We literally went through reporting a few months back where he was clearly instructing the team to make sure his tweets always come up, for everyone. Feel free to give me a source for that, but I'm pretty sure that's not true.

slim 4y ago
looks like evolve2k is himself the source. maybe he was a twitter employee ?
- icehawk 4y ago
  ah cool thanks for figuring out they were the source of https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-boosted-elon-musk-tweets-over-biden-super-bowl-report-2023-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-boosted-elon-musk-tw...
- evolve2k 4y ago
  While it was thrilling for a moment to imagine myself as a disgruntled former Twitter staff member, that is not the case and I have not been employed there. My statement above was to read ’we’ as in as the tech community not ‘we’ Twitter staff; others have quoted some of the sources on this thread, but it was definitively reported by a few different outlets at the time.
csb6 4y ago
It was widely reported in the days following the Super Bowl that he personally ordered his Tweets be boosted after a Tweet by Biden got more engagement than his similar Tweet [0]. As far as I can tell, he did not instruct Twitter employees to make his Tweets appear to all users, but he did want them to make his posts appear in timelines significantly more often. This lead to reports of users suddenly getting their timelines flooded with lots of his Tweets. It seems like there was a rush within Twitter to raise Musk’s engagement numbers by altering the recommendation algorithm to specifically boost posts from his accounts. The special boost factor was later reduced, but allegedly still exists. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets-algorithm-changes-twitter https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets...

that_guy_iain 4y ago

If I remember correctly, he noticed that his account with 100,000,000 plus followers was only getting 40,000 or so views. This lead to a Twitter engineer saying maybe his content wasn't interesting enough to get views and getting fired. And later on Musk said that they found a bug in the fanout system because his account was so big it basically broke things and they fixed it. I remember everyone agreeing with the Twitter engineer who said maybe his content wasn't interesting enough, while to me that seemed odd. If people follow an account and they tweet and they're online they should have a high chance of seeing that tweet. That's the entire point of following someone. If someone I've followed tweets something I would like to see it.

RF_Savage 4y ago
The fanout bug was in weighting how blocks affect visibility and fanout. Apparently it was an absolute and not a relative thing, so the huge amount of blocks musk has affected their visibility.
coldcode 4y ago
You don't, at least for me, I have 5700 followers and most posts (with art) only see 200-500 impressions, whereas a year ago I was getting 3000 on average. The Following tab is clearly (at least for me) not in timeline order, so most of my followers never even know I posted anything. Since I post art most of my followers are artists, so you would think they would see them. Impressions (which are Twitter putting tweets in a timeline so that people scroll by them) are not under the control of the poster. Likes per impression for me are up, so interaction is higher which is supposed to increase how often tweets are shown, but only timely retweets seem to help any. I am trying to figure out how the algorithm decides on what to show in the Following tab, but the code is way too big to analyze without being able to run it and look at logging/metrics/stats.

dudeinjapan 4y ago

Yeah but presumably he didn't think the devs would tag a specific metric for "elon", which would later be open-sourced. It's one of those things that makes more sense in retrospect...

killingtime74 4y ago
Should have called him "Big E" to obfuscate
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  "The big guy", it's foolproof!