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i think he means trump, and i think it would've been strategically wise to give trump special treatment (tho probably not ideal)


Actually, my first thought was the previous owner, or perhaps Twitter itself. But I left the question open, since it doesn’t matter who.


Considering I had to look up who the Twitter CEO even was before Musk, I’m going to say that no, they didn’t do the same thing to themselves.


Your memory of who the previous CEO was is not evidence one way or the other.


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!


We all know said code does exist and just wasn’t part of the released source. It was very clearly used, although I know it goes against the cult so you yourself can never dare utter those words.

But no, please, go off on your tangent that is not at all centered in reality.

Such a system, which certainly exists, was also made extremely quickly. We all know the timeline. We all have seen the rants and then the immediate effect of manual changes made to please the rants. I could easily see control groups going out the window when your boss expects their tweets to be prioritized yesterday.

I also like how confident you are in a company’s ability after they explicitly laid off and fired the majority of its staff. Generally speaking, when that happens, people lose confidence rather than gain it, but here you are proving us all of wrong. Gold star for you, maybe you’ll even get the other boot now!

I’m sure it feels so rewarding to simp for a man who will never even look in your general direction, let alone talk to you or know all the great things you said about him and his companies.


Yea, I’m not willing to engage in any conversation with someone who uses ad hominem attacks. I should have noticed your previous one; I can only conclude that I wasn’t paying enough attention.


> I can only conclude that I wasn’t paying enough attention.

I mean, considering you didn't even know what the title of the "previous owner" even was, you seem to do that a lot.


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.


Isn't it a problem if the CEO of Twitter doesn't care about his/her tweets, and the general public doesn't care either?


The CEO of Twitter should be doing more important things than tweeting.

And far more important things than worrying whether said tweets are popular or not.


I bet the previous CEO never thought of firing an employee for a disability through a public tweet thread.


You mean, better the firing for disability is done in private? Isn't transparency the best way to ultimately eliminate such behaviors?


It is usually better for major criminals to confess and turn themselves in too. "I bet" doesn't read "it is morally better." And why jump to compare publicly vs privately doing it instead of doing it vs not doing it?


Completely disagree with this. The CEO using the company's own product daily is how it should be--regardless of industry.


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.

The producer is not the star.


Suppose Steve Jobs used an Android...

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".




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