Elon Musk Is Taking Down the Media

OPINION:  This article contains commentary which may reflect the author’s opinion

Although Elon Musk originally stated that he would be CEO of Twitter for a short time before finding another to take the helm, Musk is remaining CEO of the social media giant as he not only straightens out and streamlines the platform, but fights battles with detractors and mainstream media as to the operations of the company.

Musk’s takeover displeased the liberals who were happy to have conservative voices blocked, and those conservative voices returning to Twitter were perplexed that Musk would ask for opinions regarding his staying on as CEO. “Should I step down as head of Twitter?” Musk asked in the now-completed survey in December. “I will abide by the results of this poll.” More than 17.5 million votes were cast, with 57.5 percent of respondents wanting him to step down as CEO compared to 42.5 percent who wanted him to remain.

The whole question may have been tongue-in-cheek or a covert search for bots, as Musk took to Twitter on Tuesday to jokingly announce that there was a “new” CEO running the company — but it was a picture of a dog. “The new CEO of Twitter is amazing,” he said, adding in another tweet, “So much better than that other guy.

But as he obviously remains that Twitter CEO for now, Elon Musk is hitting back at the media and accusing them of falsely reporting the idea that he is boosting his own tweets on the microblogging website, Conservative Brief reports.

“Several major media sources incorrectly reported that my Tweets were boosted above normal levels earlier this week,” the CEO said on Friday. “A review of my Tweet likes & views over the past 6 months, especially as a ratio of followers, shows this to be false. We did have a bug that briefly caused replies to have the same prominence as primary Tweets, but that has now been fixed,” he said.

Musk addressed a user’s question about a story that was penned in Publisher which said he was using a system that would ensure his tweets were seen first. “The ‘source’ of the bogus Platformer article is a disgruntled employee who had been on paid time off for months, had already accepted a job at Google
and felt the need to poison the well on the way out. Twitter will be taking legal action against him,” Musk said.

At the time of the survey, separately, Musk tweeted, “The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive,” implying more seriously that the search for the right CEO would not be a quick solution, Conservative Brief reflects.

But after other users made some points about who actually drove the results of the survey, Musk appeared to have a change of heart.

“Hey @elonmusk, it’s unwise to run a poll like this when you are now deep state enemy #1,” said Kim Dotcom on Twitter. “They have the biggest bot army on Twitter. They have 100k ‘analysts’ with 30-40 accounts all voting against you. Let’s clean up and then run this poll again. The majority has faith in you.

“I’m hoping that Elon did this poll as a honeypot to catch all the deep state bots,” he added. “The dataset for this poll will contain most of them. Some good data-mining and he could kill them all in one go.”

Musk replied with a cryptic, “Interesting”.

Another user brought up the blue checkmark factor, and suggested the checks as a voting regulation. “Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy related polls. We actually have skin in the game,” Unfiltered Boss said on Twitter.

Musk replied, “Good point. Twitter will make that change.”

Originally, the CEO question came amid a backlash against Musk and Twitter after the platform announced on Sunday “saying that it was going to ban users from being able to promote their other social media accounts on other platforms,” The Daily Wire reported. “Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post,” one of the now-deleted tweets said.

Musk had been reinstating accounts that were previously banned, amid conservative cheers, when his new policies were announced. He later acknowledged the need for voting by users.

Musk eventually apologized: “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again,” and, “We recognize that many of our users are active on other social media platforms. However, we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter,” the company noted in a statement. “Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.”

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