‘This Is High Urgency’: Musk Reportedly Demanded Twitter Algorithm Change After Super Bowl Tweet Got Fewer Views Than Biden’s

Patrick Pleul/Pool Photo via AP, File

Many Twitter users are noticing more of Elon Musk’s tweets and replies in the default “For You” feed on the platform.

As The Verge noted on Monday, the social media platform appeared to change its algorithm to show more tweets from Musk, whether users are following him or not.

Now we know why.

According to a report published by the tech site Platformer, Twitter’s CEO demanded engineers rejigger the algorithm to surface his tweets in the “For You” section.

Citing people familiar with the inner workings at the company, Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton describe a man seemingly so desirous for more attention, he is willing to muster his company’s resources to achieve it:

At 2:36 on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers.

“We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform,” wrote Musk, a cousin of the Twitter CEO, tagging “@here” in Slack to ensure that anyone online would see it. “Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.”

When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.

Platformer notes Biden’s tweet supporting the Philadelphia Eagles in solidarity with First Lady and Eagles fan Jill Biden received nearly 29 million impressions. Meanwhile, Musk’s pro-Eagles tweet received 9.1 million before he deleted it.

After the game, which Musk attended in Glendale, Arizona, he flew to the Bay Area to seek answers from Twitter employees in San Francisco. He reportedly threatened to fire what’s left of the engineering team. That prompted its members “to ensure that Musk — and Musk alone — benefits from previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets to the entire user base,” according to Platformer.

Engineers “fixed” the problem by Monday afternoon.

“The algorithm now artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000,” the report states.

Last week, the publication reported Musk fired one engineer after that employee told the CEO engagement had declined on his tweets in conjunction with an overall decreasing interest in Musk online since April, as the Google Trends tool indicates.