Twitter owner Elon Musk made his account private following a myriad of users claiming the privacy setting boosted engagement and visibility.
The extent of improved visibility is unclear, though users with restricted accounts reported general improvement in engagement.
“Made my account private until tomorrow morning to test whether you see my private tweets more than my public ones,” Musk wrote early Wednesday.
“Put my account on private because apparently that’s the only way people will see your tweets,” said Libs of TikTik.
Libs of TikTok noted users commenting on her original post corroborated her initial claim, asking the tech billionaire “what’s happening?”
“Something is wrong,” Musk replied.
Other users noted private Twitter accounts created “echo chambers.”
Twitter options January 31st 2023
Option 1: 🔒Echo Chamber
Option 2: 🤖No friends, only bots
— Waffles Sensei 🧇🥷🏻 (@UserInOurMidst) February 1, 2023
Last week political commentator and podcaster Dave Rubin visited Musk at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters regarding the platform’s seemingly inconsistent engagement and visibility.
The tech billionaire referred to Twitter as a “fractal rube Goldberg machine” and referred to the platform’s code as a chain reaction-type machine designed to perform simple tasks in impractical and complicated ways. Musk further likened the platform to a Jenga tower.
“One wrong move the whole thing collapses,” Rubin said. “They’re working nonstop, and both times I met him were after midnight.”
I met with several engineers who were doing a deep dive on why my account and so many others seem to be absolutely crushed after that two or three week return to normalcy when Elon first took over. They still have more questions than answers, but they did learn a bunch of stuff.
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) January 26, 2023
“Elon was bringing people in and out constantly and seems to be aware of pretty much every issue,” Rubin said, noting the tech billionaire suggested the platform’s code may need to be “torn down” and rebuilt “from scratch.”
“At the end last night he said that the whole situation is ‘a flaming dumpster rolling down the street.’”
Rubin noted recent Twitter changes, including the incorporation of a “for you” tab has impacted engagement for accounts which received NSFA tags.
“They also don’t know for sure why things got so much better once Elon made the acquisition and why it seems far worse now,” he continued. “Some is probably related to excitement around Elon himself, which also coincided with World Cup, but that doesn’t explain why it feels so off right now.”
“Elon is funny as hell, laughs a ton and it’s just really obvious he cares about Twitter because he cares about free speech and the bigger problems facing the world,” Rubin concluded. “He doesn’t need this headache, he chose it.”
Rubin is reportedly meeting with Twitter engineers today regarding censorship and shadow ban labels for larger accounts.
