Twitter CEO Elon Musk had engineers artificially boost his reach on Twitter after finding out that a Super Bowl-related tweet of his did not perform as well as a tweet by U.S. President Joe Biden in spite of Mr. Musk having more than thrice the number of followers, according to The Guardian on Wednesday.
Tech outlet The Platformer earlier reported that Mr. Musk’s cousin James Musk, also a Twitter employee, called in engineers to rectify the situation.
The result was that users worldwide saw more tweets by Mr. Musk on their timelines, even if they were not following him. According to The Platformer, the algorithm “artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000.”
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Mr. Musk did not deny the act as he posted a meme that poked fun at users being forced to view his tweets.
The news comes shortly after reports which said Mr. Musk had fired an engineer who was trying to explain the billionaire’s drop in engagement due to falling user interest.
