BUT MUH LIKES!

Elon Musk Reportedly Fires Engineer Over Slump in His Twitter Engagement

While his social-media site breaks, Musk has been focused on getting more eyes on his tweets, going so far as to ax an engineer over the issue.

“Chief Twit” Elon Musk is mad that he’s not getting enough engagement on his own site, and he’s fired a top Twitter engineer over his declining likes. According to tech newsletter Platformer, Musk—who has been preoccupied “with worries about how many people are seeing his” posts—recently grumbled about his view counts tumbling. “This is ridiculous,” sources told Platformer. “I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.” One of the company’s principal engineers explained to Musk that “public interest in his antics is waning,” flagging a recent Google Trends chart that backed that conclusion. “You’re fired, you’re fired,” Musk allegedly told the engineer. This comes nearly two months after Musk added public view counts to tweets, and after engineers had found no evidence that Musk’s reach had been restricted in any way. The impetuous billionaire fired over half the staff, including engineers and developers, shortly after purchasing Twitter last fall. Since then, amid extreme cost-cutting measures, plummeting revenues, and unpopular services, the site has continued to face glitches and even outages.

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Justin BaragonaSenior Media Reporter

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