Report: Elon Musk Fired Engineer Over His Declining Popularity

Elon Musk is not happy with his own algorithm at Twitter — and he reportedly fired an engineer who informed him that his reach and engagement were declining on the social media platform.

According to the tech newsletter Platformer, Musk met with several engineers on Tuesday to discuss the algorithm and questioned his team as to why he appeared to be decreasing in popularity on the platform he purchased for $44 billion.

“This is ridiculous,” Musk reportedly told the anonymous sources during the meeting. “I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”

According to the sources, one engineer whose name is being kept anonymous “in light of the harassment Musk has directed at former Twitter employees,” told the Tesla and SpaceX CEO that it could potentially be due to the growing public fatigue over his antics on the social media platform.

The engineer reportedly showed Musk data from Google Trends that showed how Musk’s popularity peaked in Google search rankings last April around the time he acquired Twitter and has been declining ever since.

The engineer was subsequently fired, per the report, though neither Musk nor Twitter has commented on the incident publicly.

Musk recently went private on Twitter for a short period of time in an attempt to test Twitter’s algorithm after users claimed they were reaching higher engagement from followers after switching their accounts to private.

This helped identify some issues with the system. Should be addressed by next week.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2023

“This helped identify some issues with the system,” Musk said following his short test. “Should be addressed by next week.”

Musk is currently still serving as interim CEO of the company.