According to recent reports, Twitter’s internal operations are continuing to freefall as new owner Elon Musk complains of poor engagement across the platform. In one incident, Musk fired one of the few remaining senior engineers keeping the platform running for telling him the truth about engagement on his account — that people are getting tired of Elon Musk and his antics.
Platformer reports that Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, recently met with a group of engineers and advisors at Twitter’s headquarters to discuss the drop in engagement on his Twitter account. “This is ridiculous,” Musk said, according to multiple sources. “I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”
Elon Musk watches SpaceX launch (Joe Raedle /Getty)
One of Twitter’s two remaining principal engineers presented a Google Trends chart and internal data that showed Musk’s popularity score had decreased from 100 in April of last year — the maximum score possible — to just nine this month. The engineers had previously looked to see if Musk’s reach had been artificially constrained by the tools typically used to shadowban and limit the reach of conservatives. However, they had not discovered any indications of algorithmic bias. “You’re fired, you’re fired,” Musk reportedly told the engineer who presented the chart telling him the ugly truth — people just don’t aren’t into Elon Musk as much these days.
There is speculation that Twitter’s addition of the public view count feature seven weeks ago might be to blame for the drop in engagement and views. Musk described the feature at the time, stating that it: “Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions.”
To make room for the view display, the like and retweet buttons were shrunk, making it more difficult for users to tap them. It’s also thought that Twitter’s increasingly buggy product contributes to the decrease in engagement. Twitter recently experienced a serious outage, preventing users from sending tweets and displaying the message, “You are over the daily limit for sending tweets.”
Platformer reports that the cause of this error was an employee’s deletion of data for an internal service that regulates Twitter usage rates. One current Twitter employee stated: “As the adage goes, ‘you ship your org chart. It’s chaos here right now, so we’re shipping chaos.”
Current employees have described the workplace at Twitter as being extremely troubled and chaotic, with workers struggling to implement new features while the core service breaks down as a result of Musk’s irrational approach to product management. This chaos is making it less likely that Musk will be able to recoup the $44 billion he paid for Twitter and could hasten its demise into insolvency.
The increasingly pessimistic atmosphere appears to have spread throughout Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. Employees are rumored to frequently inquire about one another’s job offers and where they are interviewing. Employees must make reservations for the beds on the 8th floor of the building in advance; the beds are typically fully booked on weeknights.
The benefits that once made working at Twitter appealing have also vanished. Free food, unlimited vacation time, and the open office concept have all been eliminated.
The working conditions under Musk can be summarized by one employee’s statement: “When you’re asked a question, you run it through your head and say ‘what is the least fireable response I can have to this right now?’”
Read more at Platformer here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan