Elon Musk continues to experiment with Twitter. The latest one was to make his own account private. The Twitter boss made this decision after receiving a tweet from Libs of TikTok, who claimed that their tweets were more visible "on private":
Wow… these comments… @elonmusk what’s happening? https://t.co/bcIUm8HraB
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 31, 2023
Musk set out to put this claim to the test using his own account, but not before assuring his millions of followers that it was temporary and that he would remove the following day:
By making this decision, only users who already followed Musk will be able to see his tweets. All other users will have to send a follow request that Musk himself will have to approve manually. In addition, the Twitter CEO's followers will not be able to retweet him, but will have to take screenshots of his tweets in order to share them.
As with every tweet he posts, reactions from his 127.7 million followers soon followed, with many people supporting Musk's initiative while others took a dim view:
First, they locked us in our homes for two weeks to “slow the spread.”
Now they’re coercing us to lock our Twitter accounts for “more engagement.”
Do not comply.
— Brandon Drey (@BrandonDrey) February 1, 2023
Former model and Washington Post contributor Courtney Lynne assured Musk that, at least in her case, the theory seemed to hold true:
working! I usually have to look for your tweets and this tweet was on the top of my feed when I opened Twitter .
— CourtneyLynne (@kourtneelynne) February 1, 2023
My guess is the recommendation alg has learned that private accounts tweet rarely, and so when do tweet, they end up shown more often
— Reza Zadeh (@Reza_Zadeh) February 1, 2023
All of your tweets go viral, I don’t think this will make a difference.
— David Weissman ✡️ (@davidmweissman) February 1, 2023
