Twitter Has Secret List To Promote Musk And Nominees

Twitter has a list of users with greater visibility than others. The statement is from the Platformer website, which would have discovered a restricted group of 35 people with ample growth, without justified reason, in recent months.

Twitter might let you hide the Blue Badge
Twitter will remove blue badge from verified accounts without Twitter Blue

The list is very eclectic and ranges from sports stars, such as American basketball player LeBron James, to YouTubers, Twitter investors and even the President of the United States, Joe Biden. Some viral content profiles, such as Drill, and political commentators also had their reach expanded.

Musk would have a VIP list used to monitor the effectiveness of his recommendation algorithm (Image: Reproduction / Twitter)

The VIP list also includes some comedians, a fashion writer, an account focused on promoting Tesla releases (@teslaownerssv) and some journalists. All these people have little in common with each other, so a certain amount of suspicion about the sudden visibility has been raised.

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Platformer reports that the list was initially created to help keep up with recent Twitter algorithm changes. The idea was to have a kind of study group to follow how each change affects the reach of celebrities.

Range adjustment tool

The site explains that the developers created a way to adjust the ranking system when they noticed a drop in engagement from these “high profile users”. The goal was to ensure that tweets from such select accounts were always displayed.

Musk was already on that list before taking the post, but seems to have taken a dip in December. Since then, Twitter engineers have made new changes that have left the tycoon’s profile again at the top of the nominations, which would explain why today he is omnipresent in the timeline of all users.

The Platformer guarantees to have obtained internal information that reveals some of the demands made by Musk. The “chief executive” would repeatedly flag complaints from high-profile users, forcing developers to act as an exclusive “customer support team” for Musk and his favorite users.

At least the billionaire doesn’t just treat his friends differently. The list includes some enemies Musk has had problems with in the past, such as US Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

It’s more about treating everyone equally. There shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities imo.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2023

Last week, Musk responded to a complaint from actor William Shatner about the loss of the Twitter Bluem badge, which would likely affect the visibility of his posts. The billionaire responded that it’s not about making more money, it’s about “treating everyone equally”, with no different standard for “celebrities”. If Platformer’s claim is true, then Musk would be lying about equality.

Opening the Twitter Code

The differentiated ranking system for VIPs has Twitter employees wondering about the need to open-code the recommendation algorithm. If this is done, only a small specific part would be demonstrated, without encompassing the boost system for high-profile accounts and other strategic actions, guarantees Platformer.

When he took office, Musk revealed that the old administration adopted a tag system that guided the algorithm to boost or demote content according to Twitter’s interests. He accused former administrators of favoring progressive ideals and narrowing the reach of conservatives.

4. Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino (@dbongino), who at one point was slapped with a “Search Blacklist.” pic.twitter.com/AdOK8xLu9v

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 9, 2022

It remains to be seen if anything will change now with the prioritization of visibility of verified accounts by Twitter Blue. The platform already gives priority to verified tweet responses and will recommend only those accounts on the “For you” page.

Earlier this week, it was discovered that some of Twitter’s source code was leaked on GitHub. So far, the culprit has not been identified, although it is suspected to be a disgruntled former employee.

Read the article on Canaltech.

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