Elon Musk took aim at false media reporting that suggested he was using and abusing his new Twitter project to boost his own exposure to users on the platform. Musk singled out the source of the news as a disgruntled employee and promised “legal action” against him.
“Several major media sources incorrectly reported that my Tweets were boosted above normal levels earlier this week,” Musk said in the first of several tweets. “A review of my Tweet likes & views over the past 6 months, especially as a ratio of followers, shows this to be false.”
“We did have a bug that briefly caused replies to have the same prominence as primary Tweets, but that has now been fixed,” he added.
Criticism of Musk has been relentless ever since the now-CEO threatened to take the company private last spring. The story goes that Musk and Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon were talking about the Bee’s permanent ban for a joke made at the expense of Joe Biden’s Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Musk, promoting the idea of free speech, said he might just have to buy Twitter to prevent Big Tech from having a monopoly on the digital townsquare of the modern era. The rest is history.
Elon Musk backed up his assertion that accusations of boosting were false, presenting as one example one of his most popular tweets ever that was achieved when he had just a fraction of the followers he does today.
“For example, despite having ~40M fewer followers back then, I have yet to come anywhere close to this gem,” he said with a photo of the analytics on a tweet in which he quipped that he was going to purchase Coca-Cola.
For example, despite having ~40M fewer followers back then, I have yet to come anywhere close to this gem pic.twitter.com/bXVRqNQZhT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2023
The specific comment leveled at him about boosting to ensure being seen more frequently in users’ timelines first appeared in Publisher. That article cited a “disgruntled employee,” Musk said.
“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,” Twitter’s CEO stated.
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2023
While Musk’s future as owner appears solid, his role as CEO remains up in the air ever since he conducted a poll asking for feedback as to whether or not he should stay in the role. Musk has repeatedly said it is difficult to find time juggling SpaceX, Tesla, and now Twitter, among his many ventures.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
“Should I step down as head of Twitter?” Musk asked in the now-completed survey. “I will abide by the results of this poll.” Nearly 20 million votes were cast in that poll, with a majority responding in the affirmative.
Musk has yet to follow through with his stated intention of abiding by the results, and some more scrupulous users suggested it was even a method of uncovering the legion of bots rumored to be active on the platform.
“Hey @elonmusk, it’s unwise to run a poll like this when you are now deep state enemy #1,” said the popular account Kim Dotcom. “They have the biggest bot army on Twitter. They have 100k ‘analysts’ with 30-40 accounts all voting against you. Let’s clean up and then run this poll again. The majority has faith in you.”
“I’m hoping that Elon did this poll as a honeypot to catch all the deep state bots,” Kim added. “The dataset for this poll will contain most of them. Some good data-mining and he could kill them all in one go.”
Musk replied to that idea in just one word: “Interesting.”
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