Posted on 09/20/2024 10:25:49 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
There are many damning anecdotes in Kate Conger and Ryan Mac’s new book, “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” but one from February of last year perfectly captures the astonishing pettiness of the world’s richest man.
Attending the Super Bowl as a guest of Rupert Murdoch, Musk had one of the most luxurious seats in the house, but rather than watching the game, he was glued to his phone in dismay. Both he and President Biden had sent tweets cheering on the Philadelphia Eagles, but even though Biden had far fewer followers than Musk on the platform, the president’s tweet garnered 29 million views to Musk’s 8.4 million. Livid, Musk demanded that his engineers find out why his tweet was underperforming Biden’s. He left the game early to fly back to his San Francisco office, where dozens of employees were summoned to meet him on a Sunday night.
Eventually, to placate their boss, the engineers tweaked Twitter’s algorithm to boost Musk’s posts, pushing them into users’ feeds whether they follow him or not. “In effect, Musk’s tweets would have higher priority over any other post,” write Conger and Mac, technology reporters for The New York Times. As they put it toward the end of the book, “A man allergic to criticism had bought himself the largest audience in the world, and hoped for praise.” No wonder he and Trump get along.
What Trump has done to the Republican Party, Musk has done to Twitter, which he’s renamed X. It was always bad, but now it’s much worse. Because Musk has ruined its system for verifying users and gutted its content moderation, it’s teeming with fake news; on Wednesday, for example, it was full of false claims, amplified by Musk himself, that a car with an...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Recommend reading Walter Isaacson’s recent 600 page biography of Elon Musk. He spent two years with Musk gathering information, and Musk did not do any editing since he did not even read the book before it was published. We need a lot more Elons and Donalds in this World.
As said by the NY Slimes magazine.
Gag, Hack, barf.
Consider the source, America’s worst excuse for a newspaper. It has been driven into the ground by the Sulzberger family and is now staffed by extreme left wingers who wouldn’t know the truth if they fell over it.
I don’t even bother reading any of the posts from NYT or WaPo. Every one I HAVE read are nothing but lies and vitriol. They are scum.
Meanwhile, thousands of NYT scribblers have been fired the past three years, with management deeming them unnecessary, useless and insentient.
They scream “It’s a private company They can do whatever they want!” But not Musk? Hypocrites personified.
I pray Musk does something to Michelle that she seriously dislikes, while she realizes what a nothing she is.
Yup,what a load of 🐄💩.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.