Musk fires X engineer after being told people were losing interest in him

American entrepreneur Elon Musk fired an X engineer after the latter told him that people were no longer engaging with his posts because they had started to lose interest in him, Newsweek writes, citing excerpts from a book by independent journalist Jacob Silverman.

Musk was “obsessed with the amount of engagement his posts [were] receiving,” according to the tech publication Platformer. He fired a company engineer who told him that engagement on his tweets was down because people weren’t as interested in him.

As noted, during the 2023 Super Bowl, Elon Musk tweeted that he was rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles. President Joe Biden also tweeted that he was supporting the Eagles on behalf of his wife Jill. Biden’s tweet generated about three times the number of views as Musk’s. That apparently was unacceptable to Musk, who deleted his tweet and flew to California after the game to demand changes to Twitter’s algorithm.

Thanks to the middle-of-the-night participation of 80 company engineers, the “high urgency” issue was quickly solved.

According to Newsweek, engineers adjusted Twitter’s systems so that Musk’s posts would be prioritized.