In 2022, Twitter users voted on whether Elon Musk should remain head of the messenger service. The decision fell against Musk. He intends to give up his position at the end of the year.
Twitter owner Elon Musk is taking his time with the promised handover of the post at the online network. Musk said in a video interview at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Wednesday that he assumes that finding a new boss by the end of the year would be a good time. First, he wants to ensure that Twitter is stable and financially healthy.
Musk bought Twitter in October in a deal worth around $44 billion and also took over the post as CEO. Turbulent weeks followed, with half the workforce being laid off and controversy surrounding the activation of blocked accounts, including that of ex-President Donald Trump. In December, Musk had Twitter users vote on whether he should give up the post – and around 60 percent voted in favor of it. He then announced that he would hand over the lead once he found someone for the job.
Musk is expanding his own Twitter reach
During his appearance, Musk reiterated his accusation that the previous Twitter leadership had interfered too much with the service’s freedom of expression. At the same time, the industry blog “Platformer” reported, citing employees, that at Musk’s request, the distribution of his own tweets had been drastically increased. Users noticed that on Tuesday – and Musk then announced that the algorithm should be adjusted again.
According to “Platformer”, the trigger for the artificial boost for Musk’s tweets was the fact that his tweet about the football final game Super Bowl was shown to users less often than that of US President Joe Biden. Musk later deleted his tweet. After the game, Twitter asked software developers to expand Musk’s reach.
With Twitter, users can either display the short messages in chronological order – or select them from the software. The reason for Musk’s irritation was his impression that his tweets had appeared too rarely in the latter algorithmic timeline. The systems could have downgraded him, among other things, because he was blocked by many users. After adjusting the rules, however, his tweets were generally given the green light, reported “Platformer”. As a result, users have noticed in the past few days that their automatically created timelines were full of Musk’s tweets.
