After Super Bowl slight, Elon Musk breaks Twitter feed

Both Elon Musk and President Joe Biden tweeted their support for the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl, typical posturing by powerful men scrounging for popular appeal. But for the Twitter CEO, the moment was apparently a high-stakes popularity contest. 

When Musk lost, he decided to rig the system as only an authoritarian billionaire social media executive could. Apparently frustrated that his tweet supporting the Eagles received a third as many impressions as the president’s, Musk flew straight back to the Bay Area and demanded answers from his engineering team, according to a Platformer report Tuesday. The eventual solution wasn’t a bug fix but an artificial boost.

Musk and his deputies pulled in 80 employees to tackle the perceived issue, Platformer reported. The engineers, with their jobs reportedly at stake, worked through the night. The end result Monday was a new system designed to boost Musk’s tweets to the website’s entire user base. His tweets would bypass Twitter’s personalized content filters and wouldn’t trigger any issue if displayed back to back (to back) in a feed. This “power user multiplier,” Platformer noted, applies only to Musk.

Users, especially those who follow Musk, logged on the day after the Super Bowl to find an algorithm seemingly gone awry. Many feeds started with more than a dozen consecutive posts from the Twitter head, ranging from bizarre replies to tweets testing his newfound reach. Musk has since acknowledged the issue and said Twitter is working on a fix.

“He bought the company, made a point of showcasing what he believed was broken and manipulated under previous management, then turns around and manipulates the platform to force engagement on all users to hear only his voice,” an anonymous employee told Platformer. “I think we’re past the point of believing that he actually wants what’s best for everyone here.”

For the engineers remaining at the social media firm, a climate of deference and fear has settled over the San Francisco office. Musk fired a top engineer last week because he suggested to the CEO that his declining view counts might be linked to declining public interest in Twitter’s owner, Platformer reported.

Musk posted a poll in December asking if he should step down as CEO, and 10 million people voted “yes.” At a summit Wednesday, he said he’s aiming to stabilize the company before handing over the reins by the end of 2023 — a promise he’s made before. 

In the meantime, his joke about a dog taking over the company, boosted to the social network’s masses, has 75 million views.

Hear of anything going on at Twitter or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.