- Twitter engineers have ensured that tweets by VIPs like Elon Musk will be more visible than others.
- A new report by Platformer revealed that 35 people have had their posts boosted by Twitter’s algorithms.
- This means their tweets automatically bypass an algorithm meant to cap a Twitter user’s reach.
Twitter is secretly boosting the accounts of 35 VIP users over others, per a new report from Platformer.
Platformer’s Managing Editor Zoë Schiffer cited internal documents from Twitter which listed 35 VIP users, who all have their posts monitored and promoted for greater visibility.
Schiffer published 14 out of the 35 names on the list, which included NBA star Lebron James, YouTube star Mr. Beast, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, and Twitter’s own CEO, Elon Musk.
The list also included the pro-Trump, MAGA-friendly Twitter commentator, catturd2, with whom Elon Musk has had many Twitter conversations.
Twitter engineers have ensured that tweets by these VIP users will automatically be ranked higher than others in terms of their visibility, Platformer revealed. The VIP users’ tweets also bypass a Twitter algorithm which prevents too many posts from a particular user from being viewed, per Platformer.
The 14 names listed also appeared to span the political spectrum. President Joe Biden was on Platformer’s list of the 14 users, but curiously, not former President Donald Trump — though the latter now sticks to posting on Truth Social, despite being let back on Twitter in November.
Not all the people on the exclusive list are Musk’s fans. Musk has a storied history of publicly feuding with Ocasio-Cortez, for one. In December, Musk got into a Twitter spat with Ocasio-Cortez, during which she told him to “lay off the proto-fascism” and put his phone down.
Platformer did not publish the full list of people on the list to protect the identities of their sources.
The publishing of this list comes after a December article from Platformer, which reported that Musk was asking Twitter to tweak Twitter’s code to make sure his posts were more visible.
In February, upset that his post on the Super Bowl got fewer impressions than Biden’s, Musk ordered changes to be made that boosted the visibility of his tweets over anyone else on the platform, per a separate Platformer report in February.
The revealing of this list comes just as Twitter is scheduled to remove its legacy blue-ticks from April 1. Legacy blue ticks indicate that an account is a verified user of “public interest,” like politicians, public figures, and celebrities.
Representatives for Musk did not immediately reply to Insider’s request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
Insider contacted Twitter for comment via an email to its press department. The company responded with an automated message that did not address Insider’s queries.
