Twitter deploys new code to ‘force-feed’ Elon Musk’s tweets to users

Several Twitter users have reported a strange occurrence on Twitter on February 13 as they were seeing Elon Musk’s tweet even though they don’t follow him. Other users complained that their Twitter feed is full with all of Musk’s tweets.

As a response, A screenshot from a pornographic movie was tweeted by Elon Musk. The billionaire's response has drawn criticism while people have called it “sexist”. Others are saying that Musk is tweeting stuff that ordinary people would’ve been banned for if they dared to share it on Twitter.

One of the Indian users tweeted, “An entrepreneur in usa can put such tweets. If entrepreneur like Ambani and Adani in India start posting such tweets people will boycott them (sic).”

Meanwhile, according to Platformer, all of Musk's tweets are instantly approved on Twitter, bypassing the company's content filters that are meant to display users the finest material. A new code allows an algorithm that now gives Musk's tweets an artificial boost of 1,000, ensuring that they always rank higher than everyone else's in the feed.

Also Read: Elon Musk donated around $1.95 billion in Tesla shares last year

The publication says this is referred to as a "power user multiplier" internally, but it only applies to Elon Musk at the moment. The technique also enables Musk's account to get around Twitter rules that would normally stop a single account from overtaking the "For You" feed.

Livemint could not independently verify the claim.

It explains why users on Twitter saw that Musk dominated the feed, with a dozen or more Musk tweets and replies visible to anyone who followed him and millions more who did not. Currently, tweets from Musk are seen by over 90% of his followers.

Also Read: 'What are your requests for Twitter…': Elon Musk - here's what users suggested

On February 13, he wrote a few tweets while on a teleconference with Twitter engineers to see if the solutions they had developed were performing as he had expected. “Please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh .… “algorithm”,” Musk later tweeted - apparently indicating that the new code might be rolled back shortly.

As per Platformer, Elon Musk’s account continues to enjoy the artificial boost, despite the fact that the factor is no longer greater than 1,000.