Elon Musk says Twitter will sue a “disgruntled employee” who posted a “false article” about amplifying his tweets
Twitter CEO Elon Musk said he was following up on a “disgruntled employee” who he claims was the source of a “fake” article about him.
On Tuesday, Platformer, a newsletter that closely follows Twitter, published a report titled, “Yes, Elon Musk created a special system to show you all his tweets first.”
According to the article, Musk ordered changes to Twitter’s algorithm after a tweet from him during the Super Bowl received less engagement than President Joe Bidens. Musk quickly rallied dozens of Twitter workers after Sunday night’s game to fix the issue.
As of Monday, the Platformer report said, Twitter’s algorithm had “artificially amplified Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 — a consistent score that ensured his tweets ranked higher in the feed than any other.”
On Monday, many Twitter users reported seeing an unusually high number of Musk’s tweets in their timelines.
musk tweeted early Friday: “The ‘source’ of the fake platformer article is a disgruntled employee who had been on paid leave for months, had already accepted a job at Google and felt the need to poison the well on the way out. Twitter will take legal action against him.”
Musk did not identify the employee or reveal why he is suspected as a source, and therefore whether Musk’s claims are accurate could not be confirmed.
The article’s authors, Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton, each responded to Musk’s tweet by calling him: “totally wrong‘, adding: ‘We stand by our reporting.”
They also discussed the article on the New York Times‘S hard fork Podcast Friday, where Schiffer said, “Basically, Elon’s main concern since December isn’t the fact that it’s losing billions of dollars and it’s still not profitable, but that its popularity appears to be falling.”
Twitter did not immediately respond wealth‘s request for comment.
In December, Schiffer tweeted that Musk threatened to sue Twitter employees who leak confidential information to the press. She also added a link The Tech Worker Handbook, add to“If you’re a tech contemplating sharing information with the media, you have rights.”
A report by Platformer earlier this month said Musk told an engineer, “You’re fired,” after being told interest in his tweets appeared to be waning.
On Friday, Musk tweeted, “Several major media sources incorrectly reported that my tweets were boosted above normal levels earlier this week. A review of my Tweet Likes & Views over the past 6 months, specifically as a follower ratio, shows this to be incorrect. We had a bug that briefly caused replies to have the same meaning as primary tweets, but that’s now fixed.”
He noticed that He’s never come close to repeating the level of engagement, which he achieved with an April 2020 tweet that read, “Next, I’ll buy Coca-Cola to refill the cocaine,” even though he was about 40 million at the time had fewer followers than today (he currently has). about 129 million).
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