[pavlov]

He's lost himself in the fake popularity of being a social media celebrity. He started believing that having 100 million followers on a web site really means that a continent's worth of people adore you. For all his complaints about bots after he got cold feet on the Twitter purchase, he seems strangely naïve about how social media really works and what's real there.

“This is ridiculous,” he said, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting. “I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”

- https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/9/23593099/elon-musk-twitter...

By Monday afternoon, “the problem” had been “fixed.” Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, meaning his posts will bypass Twitter’s filters designed to show people the best content possible. The algorithm now artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed.

- https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets...

[ChildOfChaos]

I almost feel like Elon's story is the ultimate one about someone getting addicted to popularity and social media, I've seen so many 'smart', respected people get onto platforms and then slowly but completely fall from grace.

The difference with Elon is he had real power, money and influence, so in the end he used that to actually buy Twitter, that's the ultimate social media addiction right there.

Much like Social media can be a distraction from our bigger desires and goals, I feel like Elon's buying of twitter is the ultimate distraction from the more intreasting work he was doing.

[mmsimanga]

I think most geniuses are flawed. Yes Elon is a genius of sorts. I can't say what exactly but he definitely is smart to have gotten as far as he has. Luckily for geniuses of yesteryear social media didn't exist so they couldn't spread their flaws to a 100 million people at the click of a button. We just get anecdotes and the odd book from people close to the likes of Edison that he wasn't such a nice man.

[ChildOfChaos]

Indeed, I think by the very definition, people that do such things, need to have something a little different about them, that difference can manifest in both genius and madness, perhaps both in the same person, social media just gives them a megaphone and an audience to amplify both.

[boeingUH60]

A similar story to Donald Trump...it's interesting how social media and the addiction to constant attention can rot people's brains, and it doesn't discriminate regardless of financial status.

[moffkalast]

So the real reason behind him buying Twitter was to force the entire site to be his followers? Lmao.

[rco8786]

This is pretty plainly obvious to anyone who has been a Twitter user throughout this whole thing.

I was (was) a daily user for the last ~8 years. Then a few months ago all of the sudden like half my timeline was either elons tweets or tweets about elon. I don’t follow him and never have. But there he was, all over my timeline.

[DeusExMachina]

I have been using Twitter for 12 years and this has not been "obvious" to me at all. You shouldn't assume that your opinions are obvious or even shared by the majority of people you mention.

[richrichardsson]

Another 12 years user here: I had to block Elon because muting him wasn't enough, and I was getting tired of the sudden massive influx of Elon tweets I was seeing.

Just anecdata though.

[stranded22]

I’ve blocked him - it was getting too much and I really don’t care what his view on things are.

I had a lot of admiration for him until he became more public - now, I think he is a cruel person who’s politics do not align one bit with me.

[Vespasian]

Same here.

I just did a quick survey of his tweets going back to roughly February 24th.

7 Meme

1 Twitter Ad

11 American Culture War/Politics

1 Spacex

8 Starlink/Spacex Retweets

2 Tesla Retweet

2 AI Hot Take

3 Irrelevant

This is a real bad noise-to-signal ratio for me.

Everything I'm interested in I can get from company accounts (SpaceX/Tesla) and/or third party reporting.

As a consequence, I decided to keep him blocked since otherwise his "algorithmically enhanced Ego" has a tendency of finding its way back into my perception.

[pjc50]

It gets worse if you look at his replies. About 50% of them are just "cry-laugh emoji", but the interesting ones are who gets a "looking into it".

[ChildOfChaos]

This is the problem in my view with people that use social media to post everything too much, who overshare.

Elon could have been this guy that was doing cool stuff, super smart and doing some good stuff for the world, but now most people think he is a jerk.

People that get known for their work, it's not really a good look for them to wade into politics or controversial topics they have no expertise or right to start talking about.

[DeusExMachina]

> now most people think he is a jerk

Do they? I don’t. I also know many people with many differing views and they don’t either. This looks again like you are projecting you opinion on the majority of people with no data to support it.

[api]

Ahh but it gets attention and that is addictive.

[rco8786]

“My opinions are my own and not that of my employer or the entire world” yadda yadda. I’m not the only person to notice this..

[pjc50]

The ""evil"" version of Tom from Myspace.

[panick21_]

I mean if its true and he has 100 million followers and he has only 10000ish impression then there is something seriously wrong. Because that flat out makes no sense.

Even if you assume 60% bods, and 70% of users not reading their timeline.

[benjaminwootton]

The timeline of people you actively follow isn’t the default any more. They push the machine learning driven feed as the default option and switch back to it when you restart the app.

With that in mind, Elons main option is to ask the algorithm for more impressions in the black box feed. That will get him into the feeds of non followers and show his tweets to followers when they eventually log in.

I experienced something similar on LinkedIn. I used to have a lot of followers and high engagement. At some point it changed such that the algorithm could bury you or promote you as it sees fit. At that point the only option is to write content that the algorithm promotes rather than content which your followers find interesting. Everyone worked this out and started writing their vulnerable virtue signalling stories for engagement, and the platform went downhill.

[joshspankit]

It makes sense from the perspective of the “social media bait and switch”.

Intuitively you’d think that following someone indicates that you want to see their posts immediately after they post it, but the “algorithms” distort that entirely as a way of making money for the platform.

Whether it’s requiring people to pay $$ to reach more followers, or promoting “posts” (ads) from other paying accounts that you’re not following, or even promoting sticky content designed to keep users on the app a little bit longer (and thus expose them to more ads + boost their DAU count). The whole “timeline” paradigm is a lie. I mean, it’s rarely even sorted by time.

[pavlov]

We don’t know how long the tweet in question had been up. 5 minutes? An hour?

Without this information it’s impossible to guess about the reasons because impressions accumulate over time.

[panick21_]

Agree. I not taking him at his word that he is correct, and of course we would need more data. But it does sound strange.

My problem with all these twitter reporting reminds me of Tesla a few years ago, people just wildly extrapolating and infering from tiny amount of information and then deriving prove that Musk is a piece of shit and the company is going down in flames.

The first can be argued, but the second doesn't seem to be happening nearly as much as people claim.

[z3c0]

Is it though? Just because somebody follows Musk does not mean they engage with his content enough for it to be floated up past everything else they may follow. It's very likely that a great deal of those followers don't find his content interesting, but don't find it objectionable enough to unfollow him.

[panick21_]

I mean, an impression counts views normally right? It would seem strange that so few people saw the tweet.

Its also the case that he usually gets quite a few retweets and often lots of responses as well. So the number just seem low to me.

[z3c0]

I missed this prior to now, but (in my experience with web analytics - I'm not a Twitter dev) impressions are typically when it appears in a users view. A "scroll past" is usually enough, because advertisers just want to know that it made it in front of somebody. Their marketers will handle "grabbing your attention." However, whether it ever makes it to a users view to begin with is determined by "The Algorithm", which would be seeded by a users past interactions. Ignore Musk tweets enough, and presumably, they'll stop showing up by default.

[skywhopper]

Sure, something was wrong, but it’s important whether it was a anti-Elon conspiracy or just a buggy complex system. When you’ve gotten rid of most engineering staff, I’d bet on the latter.

[api]

I consider him a casualty of social media addiction. In this case the alcoholic bought the bar.

[yawboakye]

he uses his account to announce product features as well. in that sense, it won't be any different than artificially boosting tweets by elected officials to ensure they get the attention they deserve. unfortunately, the user can put the personal back in personal account and tweet many things unrelated to their office (or in elon's case, twitter product updates). unfair use of privilege. but just as you previously argued that twitter is just a website, this sleight shouldn't get more than the attention it needs.

[rqtwteye]

"He's lost himself in the fake popularity of being a social media celebrity. He started believing that having 100 million followers on a web site really means that a continent's worth of people adore you."

That seems to happen to almost all people who are popular on social media and Youtube. They have millions of loyal followers and it really gets to their head. The same happened to Jordan Peterson. He used to have good insights on psychology but lately he seems to believe he has perfect wisdom on everything and he has tons of people who tell him that.

As far as Musk goes, for me the breaking point was the Thai cave situation where he tried (and succeeded) to suck up attention with their submarine prototype although nobody working on it knew anything about cave diving. Sheer arrogance and attention seeking.

[pc_edwin]

It has become evident that placing one's trust in mainstream media is an exercise in futility, as they are often found to be biased in their reporting against tech.

Elon Musk's claim regarding the algorithm flaw resulting in his de-ranking was indeed accurate.

The feature was intended to lower the ranking of frequently being blocked accounts. However, the flaw was that it did not account for larger accounts, allowing a small group of individuals to effectively engage in a DDOS attack against large accounts.

[pavlov]

What’s mainstream media in this case? The Verge, a web-only publication that only writes about tech? Seems like stretching the definition beyond any usefulness…

[pc_edwin]

Your question is quite intriguing. In my view, mainstream media refers to media organisations that are prominent in the current cultural and political environment.

In my opinion, these organisations have largely turned against the tech industry, perceiving it as a competitor and a generally negative force.

For instance, The Verge is owned by Vox, which I personally consider with all due respect an extremely biased leftist institution that has increasingly engaged in activist journalism in recent times.

In my opinion, The Verge has changed significantly since 2015/2016 and is now unrecognizable.

[pavlov]

> "mainstream media refers to media organisations that are prominent in the current cultural and political environment"

So Fox News and Breitbart are mainstream media?

Fox is the most watched TV channel in the United States — hard to argue they're not an essential part of the current political environment. And Breitbart is certainly more prominent and influential than a niche site like The Verge. The latter's editors don't get White House jobs.

[pc_edwin]

Fox News yes, Breitbart nope. They haven't been in the zeitgeist for years.

Its worth nothing that although there are no strict definitions of what counts as mainstream vs independent, the populist wings of both parties loosely group them in the same buckets.

A lifetime ago, I used to consider myself populist-left and since then there hasn't been much if any difference in what I consider as mainstream.

[api]

Why just distrust mainstream media? Social media and alt media are media too.

Media means to mediate, to get between and regulate discourse. In this case it’s to get between you and reality or you and others in the social media case.

The only way to escape media is to open your eyes and interact with things directly.

[pc_edwin]

Additionally, it is worth noting that if one were a professional Twitter user with a discerning eye towards mainstream media, this issue may have been apparent from the outset.

10,000 impressions per tweet for an account with over ten million followers is remarkably low, and contradicts the principle of the law of large numbers.