Concerned by the increasingly low audiences of his tweets, Elon Musk tried to understand what was going on. An engineer explained to him that it was probably a drop in interest for his takeover of the social network. Elon Musk immediately fired him.
Did Elon Musk buy Twitter just to increase his popularity? According to Platformer, a newsletter specializing in tech company news, the reality is not that far off. In an article published on February 9, journalists Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer go behind the scenes of the secret meeting organized on February 7 by Elon Musk, whose sole purpose was to understand why his own tweets were less read than a few years ago. month. Yes, Elon Musk hosted a meeting with top Twitter engineers to talk about his personal account.
Elon Musk’s theory is this: someone is censoring him. Twitter engineers proved him wrong, with supporting figures. Several pieces of data were then shown to Elon Musk, including a Google Trends graph of people’s interest in his fiery takeover of Twitter, which went from a rating of 100 in April 2022 to 9 today. This honesty did not please Elon Musk.
“You are fired, you are fired”
According to the sources of Platformer, who wish to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, Elon Musk immediately fired the engineer who told him the bad news. The man with 128 million subscribers does not accept that his tweets are limited to a few hundred thousand views and tolerates his employee’s frankness even less. This is not the first time that Elon Musk has overreacted to an affront, he had publicly fired an employee who had explained to him on Twitter that he was wrong. What changes here is that the employee spoke in the context of a meeting, moreover at his request.
The article of Platformer recounts the chaos that reigns at Twitter, where Elon Musk has laid off the majority of employees since his arrival. The Twitter Slack, known for its activity, would have become a ghost town, since no one would dare to speak publicly. Several employees say they are afraid of making a mistake when a manager asks them a question, because of the radical reactions of Elon Musk. It must be said that, in the past, the publication of private text messages from Elon Musk have shown that no one ever contradicted him in his entourage. It seems logical that the billionaire sees the slightest opposition as an affront.
For Elon Musk, the priority at Twitter is to make money. Ready to do anything to achieve this, the billionaire intends to limit many essential functions of the social network to the Twitter Blue subscription, sold at an illegal price in France. Employees are not his priority.
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