“How Elon Musk’s Impulses Transformed Twitter: Favors for Friends Kanye West and Marc Andreessen, and Gut Decision-Making, Followed His Takeover of the Platform Now Called X”, 2023-09-07 (; backlinks):
Kanye West reached out to his friend Elon Musk early this year for a favor: Let me back on Twitter. The social-media platform had suspended West in December 2022 for violating its rule against hate speech after he posted an image of a swastika merged with a Star of David. The musician and designer, who goes by the name Ye, has been considering a 2024 presidential run, according to people familiar with his plans, and his campaign advisers wanted him back on. [see: his bipolar diagnosis]
Previously, Twitter wouldn’t have reinstated anyone’s account without a formal company review. After Musk bought the company, which he recently renamed X Corp., he upended that process, current and former employees said, making many content decisions himself. In July, after Musk consulted with his new chief executive officer, Linda Yaccarino, the company ordered employees to work over a weekend to reinstate West’s account. The company said West wouldn’t be allowed to make money from his account, and would have to abide by company policies.
[Hypomania] …Musk’s orders often arrived by email, at all hours. One morning, weeks into his ownership, many employees woke up to an overnight email demanding they commit to “long hours at high intensity”, or take severance. He made so many decisions that employees wrote down some rulings and had him sign them, fearing he would forget what he said, according to people familiar with his actions. When told a change would take weeks, Musk sometimes asked for a quick version employees could make if they worked overnight.
[Thin-skinned] …When he felt his own posts weren’t being seen widely enough, he marshaled dozens of company engineers to make his postings some of the platform’s most visible, according to people involved in that effort…Clowes said he left the company after becoming disillusioned with what he described as Musk’s lack of vision. “It’s very subjective”, he said of Musk’s approach to the platform. “It’s just, like, what Musk feels like at the time.” Esther Crawford, one of Musk’s lieutenants before being laid off in February, said he relied too much on his gut for most decisions. “He didn’t seem compelled to seek out or rely on a lot of data or expertise to inform it”, she said in a posting on the site in July, her first public comments since departing.
…Tweet boost: Musk tweets a lot. Earlier this year, after he noticed his posts weren’t receiving as much attention, he told his lieutenants to address the issue, according to people familiar with his comments.
Some engineers at the company thought his popularity might have dropped because users were growing tired of him. When Twitter’s engineers investigated, they found that one problem was that too many users had blocked Musk, making his tweets less popular. Still, Musk told engineers his posts deserved more attention.
Company engineers were called in over a weekend to work on it, according to people involved in the effort. Many engineers had been fired or resigned, and the remaining employees didn’t know as much about the algorithm. Musk asked one former engineer if he would return for a half day of work, according to former employees. The engineer declined. At first, the engineers adjusted the systems that recommended tweets to people who didn’t follow users, but this didn’t satisfy Musk, according to people who worked on the matter. Ultimately the engineers wrote a piece of code that inserted Musk’s tweets into user timelines, which boosted Musk’s tweets for all users except those who blocked him.
Musk’s effort to boost his posts was previously reported by Platformer.