Elon Musk admits ‘something is wrong’ as right-wing accounts press him on Twitter engagement
Billionaire locked his own acount after complaints from Ian Miles Cheong and ‘Libs of TikTok’
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Louise Thomas
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Twitter boss Elon Musk made his account private on the platform and admitted “something is wrong” after complaints from right-wing users about engagement.
Mr Musk, who bought Twitter for $44bn then went on a firing frenzy at the San Francisco-based company, said he was running an experiment on his tweets.
The Tesla billionaire took action after users like right-wing commentator Ian Miles Cheong and the “Libs of TikTok” account complained about people seeing their content.
Mr Cheong said that his tweets received more engagement when his account was private than when it was publicly available.
The entrepreneur told Mr Cheong that his claims were “extremely concerning.”
And when “Libs of TikTok” tweeted they had done the same thing, Mr Musk replied, “Something is wrong.”
Mr Musk then tweeted that only his 127 million followers would be able to see his tweets for a short period of time.
“Made my account private until tomorrow morning to test whether you see my private tweets more than my public ones,” he wrote.
Some Twitter users appeared bemused by the move.
“You could ask one of the engineers you fired instead of standing on the roof and adjusting the TV antenna while shouting “How about now? Can you see anything yet?” wrote one user.
And another added: “You can’t just… ask your engineers this?”
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