There is absolutely no reason to believe there was another Single user getting this treatment before. The Elon-case was just copy & pasted as an ego-stroking hack.
You would think someone forcing themselves up to the top of a feed designed to catch your attention would be a little bit more memorable than “I had to look up what he was even called”. You didn’t even know what his title was, ffs.
I’m sure your simping for Elon is highly appreciated. Maybe he’ll let you taste his boots next.
The code under discussion has nothing to do with forcing anyone or anything to the top of a feed. It’s entire observable effect is to _measure changes in engagement_. Any use beyond that is speculative.
However, if you believe that it was to be used as part of a system for increasing engagement, then you are asserting that it is a system with no control groups, which is a stupid mistake that wouldn’t be made by an undergraduate taking their first statistics class. They wouldn’t make that mistake even on the first day of that class, because they took a class in statistics in high school!
No. Not a chance. Elon’s claims of mismanagement at Twitter have merit, though not nearly as much as he think, but the one thing that’s undeniable is that the previous “owner” (well, the CEO), is an adult that didn’t care about this shit.
Why, exactly, should the CEO of Twitter care about their own tweets getting maximum attention? If anything, this takes engineering effort away from customers because special implementations like "is_elon" have to be added.
Isn't it natural for the CEO wonder about his own tweets, and use those as a proxy for the function of the platform as a whole--esp as relates to "VIP" tweeters who Twitter arguably wants to keep happy. In fairness to Elon, his repeated inquiries about his own tweeted shined light on several legitimate bugs in their algorithm affecting VIPs.
No, it isn’t a problem if the a CEO of Twitter doesn’t care about their tweets. The proper task of any CEO is maintaining the company as an immortal entity.
If the general public cares about the CEO’s tweets, then necessarily there will be a danger that the death of the CEO will ignite a crisis in the general public; e.g. Steve Jobs at Apple.
I never suggested the CEO needs to be the star tweeter. What I am saying is that the CEO needs to be a tweeter, i.e. personally invested in his/her company's product. Companies with CEOs who don't give a shit about about their product/users tend not last long as "immortal entities".