Billionaire and Chief Twit Elon Musk called out the Washington Post for publishing a "false" article about his high engagement on Twitter that has come after he took over the social media platform.
The Washington Post's article accuses Musk of using Twitter to solely benefit his own account at the expense of user experience:
That approach was illustrated dramatically this week when the site Platformer reported Twitter had made major algorithmic changes — on Musk’s orders — that resulted in users seeing the billionaire’s tweets first. Musk had been worried that his engagement was declining: His tweet throwing support behind the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl had not performed as well as President Biden’s, for example. The fix that Twitter rolled out pushed Musk’s tweets to the top of many users’ feeds, something widely noted by users.
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Musk is a prolific Twitter user who has a penchant for tweeting his mind and sometimes landing himself in trouble in the process. Appearing in court last month over an infamous 2018 tweet declaring he had “Funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share, Musk said he sees the site as an effective way to communicate with the public, both to disseminate company information and “memes.”
Musk, who nearly has 130 million followers, had tweeted about a glitch, which has since been fixed, that caused replies to have the same prominence as primary tweets. Anyone who follows Musk knows he not only frequently tweets on his timeline, but he also replies to many users throughout the day.
Your article is false and obviously so. Do you really do no research at all? I mean, like reading a few tweets, for example. https://t.co/c3ST23XX15
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2023
For example, despite having ~40M fewer followers back then, I have yet to come anywhere close to this gem pic.twitter.com/bXVRqNQZhT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2023
Musk went on to joke that the media constantly writing up his tweets boosts his engagement and noted how some of Twitter’s prior board members "had never written a single Tweet!"
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