‘…A bug': Elon Musk rejects claims of boosting his tweets ‘above normal levels’

Twitter CEO posted a screenshot of one of his tweets that garnered around 311 million impressions despite having around 40 million follower back then.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has dismissed reports of 'reconfiguring the platform's algorithm' to boost his tweets ‘above normal levels’. He claimed to have conducted a review of his tweets from last six months to disprove the media reports and accepted that the platform had a ‘bug’ that gave ‘same prominence’ to replies as primary tweets.

Elon Musk claimed to have conducted a review of his tweets from last six months and to disprove the media reports.(AP)

“Several major media sources incorrectly reported that my tweets were boosted above normal levels earlier this week. A review of my Tweet likes & views over the past 6 months, especially as a ratio of followers, shows this to be false,” he said in a tweet.

To back his claim, he posted a screenshot of one of his tweets from last year that garnered around 311 million impressions despite having around 40 million followers back then. He is now the second-most followed person on the platform with around 129 million followers.

He was referring to media reports that claimed he had tweaked the platform's algorithm in order to gather more impressions on his tweets. It was reportedly after Musk's tweet about the Sunday Super Bowl that ‘failed to achieve as much engagement as a tweet from Joe Biden’ that efforts started to gather more attention to his tweets.

According to an interview conducted by tech news company Platformer with Musk's cousin and Twitter employee James Musk, a team of around 80 engineers was rallied with a message – ‘any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem’ – following the impression disparity episode between Musk and Biden. Those engineers allegedly ‘inflated’ Musk's tweet by a thousand times to ensure 90% of Musk's followers see his tweets.

Last week, users reported their feeds were flooded with Musk's tweets and replies. Similarly, Musk also, in a way, confirmed the move with a meme post about forcing followers to read his tweets.

However, he claimed yesterday that there was a bug that ‘caused replies to have the same prominence as primary tweets’, which has been fixed now. He also said that it is ‘highly probable’ that his followers will get to see his tweets, however, he assured that the platform's algorithm will be adjusted in the coming months to match with user's ‘most compelling’ interests.