The owner of Twitter makes a movement on social networks that has users reacting.
Twitter users looking for the latest Elon Musk tweets were in for a bit of a surprise on February 1.
A visit to Musk’s Twitter page was unexpectedly met with the message: “These tweets are protected. Only approved followers can view @elonmusk’s tweets. To request access, click follow. Learn more.”
So, users wondered why access to the tweeter-in-chief’s posts was no longer visible to the general public.
And the response sparked a huge copycat response.
Twitter users with access to Musk’s locked account began sharing what he had to say about it.
“I made my account private until tomorrow morning to test if they see my private tweets more than public ones,” Musk had tweeted.
So Musk had intentionally blocked his account. Once word of this got out, many Twitter users followed suit and also blocked their accounts.
So why did Musk block his Twitter account?
It turns out that Musk was testing a theory that was working on the internet that a Twitter algorithm was malfunctioning.
One featured user noticed that he was getting more reactions to his tweets when his feed was set to private than when it wasn’t. This is obviously the opposite of how it should work.
Ian Miles Cheong, the conservative writer and prominent Twitter user, posted a screenshot comparing a tweet he posted privately with a similar one he posted publicly. Indeed, the private got more reaction.
“Stats updated,” Cheong wrote. “Please note that the view counter has been updated to correctly reflect my reach.”
The private tweet received 3,792 likes and 36 retweets, while the public one got 800 likes and 10 retweets.
One could argue that it was not a scientific experiment. Perhaps the first tweet influenced the traffic of the second, skewing the results.
While it may not have been a definitive case study, something is going on with the algorithm, and it was enough for Musk to try the experiment himself.
Meanwhile, Twitter users reacted to the activity with a degree of sarcasm. Here is an example.
