If you’ve been using Twitter’s “For You” instead of the chronological “Following” tab, you may have noticed a problem. A number of users have remarked that the algorithmic feed has been showing a lot of Elon Musk’s tweets and replies, whether they follow him or not. Twitter’s CEO effectively confirmed the matter, tweeting “please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh… ‘algorithm.'”
I’d assume that by putting “algorithm” in quotes, Musk is joking that a person, possibly himself, may actually be responsible for the change. That’s not too far-fetched, considering that the Elon-forward feed arrived shortly after Musk complained about a drop in his own engagement and even reportedly fired an engineer over the issue.
Please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh .… “algorithm”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 14, 2023
Following that episode, Musk tweeted that a fix was coming after a “long day at Twitter HQ with eng team.” He said that 95 percent of his tweets weren’t getting delivered to the Following feed due to an issue with something called “Fanout,” so that’s now been shunted to another service. He also noted that the Recommendation algorithm wasn’t working correctly, “causing accounts with many followers to be dumped.”
There’s no word yet on why Twitter went from “Musk lite” to “all Elon all the time,” but it appears that issue is being addressed. In the meantime, you could either mute Musk (at least temporarily) or simply use the Following feed to see only the tweets you want to see, precisely when they happen.
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Steve Dent