No wonder Trump embraced him as a fellow egotist...and no wonder they
had a falling out. It's kind of amazing how self-unaware billionaires
can be.
Brent
On 10/23/2025 4:29 AM, John Clark wrote:
Ihaven'tyet read the book "/Elon Musk and the Radicalization of
Silicon Valley/" by Jacob Silverman but after reading the following
brief book review by Brian Harrod I intend to:
===
*He** raged after his tweets flopped... "/I have 100 million
followers, and only getting thousands of impressions/", **ElonMusk
axed an X engineer after they delivered the harsh truth about why his
posts were flopping, a new book claims. **Journalist Jacob Silverman
revealed in his book _Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of
Silicon Valley_ that Musk became fixated on how people interacted with
his posts following his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.*
*“/Firing more than half of Twitter employees, Musk transformed how
the platform operated/,” Silverman writes in an excerpt obtained by
Newsweek about the mass layoffs that occurred after the tech
billionaire’s 2022 Twitter takeover. Silverman then details a 2023
firing reported at the time by the tech news site Platformer.
“/He fired a company engineer who told him that engagement on his
tweets was down because people weren’t as interested in him/,”
Silverman writes. The original report described how Musk gathered
engineers and advisers at Twitter’s headquarters in 2023, where
multiple sources recalled him saying: “/This is ridiculous... I have
more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of
thousands of impressions/.”*
*
“/One of the company’s two remaining principal engineers offered a
possible explanation for Musk’s declining reach/,” Platformer
reported, withholding the engineer’s name due to the harassment Musk
directed at former employees. According to the publication, employees
presented Musk with internal data and a Google Trends chart showing
his popularity _had fallen from a peak score of 100 to just nine_.
Musk then reportedly told the engineer, “/You’re fired, you’re fired/.”*
*
In his new book, Silverman cites an example—also reported at the time
by Platformer—recounting the 2023 Super Bowl, when both then-President
Joe Biden and Musk tweeted their support for the Philadelphia Eagles,
with Biden’s post generating nearly 20 million more impressions.
“/That apparently was unacceptable to Musk, who deleted his tweet and
flew to California after the game to demand changes to Twitter’s
algorithm/,” Silverman writes. Silverman then quotes an alleged 2:36
a.m. Slack message from Musk’s cousin James Musk after the Super Bowl
fiasco, which read: “/We are debugging an issue with engagement across
the platform. Any people who can make dashboards and write software
please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you
are willing to help out please thumbs up this post/.”*
*
“/Thanks to the middle-of-the-night participation of 80 company
engineers, the ‘high urgency’ issue was quickly solved/,” Silverman
writes, detailing the changes made that ensured “/Twitter’s systems to
privilege Musk’s posts above all others. The For You feed became a
mirror of Musk’s interests, containing the right-wing accounts he
followed,/” . The author of the original Platformer article, which
detailed the operation to change the X (formerly Twitter) algorithm,
had been called out by Musk on X following its publication*
*
*
*Musk Axed X Engineer After Truth About His Poor-Performing Posts
<https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/musk-axed-x-engineer-after-truth-about-his-poor-performing-posts/ar-AA1NGYTM?fbclid=IwY2xjawNm51JleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFEOWpTZjNCdGZRTEhlbGg1AR7MYpNZYw5piv12WII0cPxesbGFEPfueOc1oLdM7n6XLWwUiPy7D6EqnA8cAw_aem_93brsZA72K44W-N7Lq-wng>
*
*John K Clark*
<https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.msn.com%2Fen-us%2Fnews%2Ftechnology%2Fmusk-axed-x-engineer-after-truth-about-his-poor-performing-posts%2Far-AA1NGYTM%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAYnJpZBExRDlqU2YzQnRmUUxIZWxoNQEedj_g0LLdxeqqzE9tmVyj6yh9ycH4jFtUfOnIJFZoMhIII8j4j6y1oVQ1nng_aem_58wa75OqDzJKzooOhtjDoA&h=AT3mwfjyo5eO4IUy2CE_h5HE4M6U0WopMOl8gKNqXw_Vk2SS7LBIF3QOxm4bieUKCHpvUPX5bk-hI1tsUaDSMIaluO_OD46jUSEZq-fdhLLYA9PU_5dVssKnF_0B73XU4t0n-NC0Cb2Vzg_9G0GRv9ZEsw&__tn__=-UK-R&c[0]=AT1ODfLbw89d4hPhd8hrmF8uzOAHxhc0CWfv2Si8dd4AIGltmr7ZagHJ0Ff6gZWK5k6A--s1HnXSuA2tn3AUOY3k85Q2615QPpWBo5A8qYx_yEYvAUR4DG6AsFsZ1h4QEHul3Mr08yy_ba7VHZd-GsHw1De9v7I02TdFIHuJqz6fkeNHI5Y>
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