Elon Musk fires Twitter engineer because of a drop in personal interaction

According to news site Platformer, Elon Musk met with several Twitter engineers earlier this week to discuss how to count views on Twitter, which has been on the decline for the past few months.

Previously, the billionaire had assigned employees to find out if his reach on the platform was restricted because of a problem in the Twitter algorithm.

Elon Musk is said to have immediately fired a Twitter engineer after this person said his popularity on the platform was dwindling (Image: Reuters)

“It’s weird. I have more than 100 million followers but only get tens of thousands of interactions,” the billionaire complained.

The engineering team met with Musk, then showed him internal data with Google Trends charts, showing that public interest in him was dwindling. Musk’s popularity peaked at 100 in April 2022 when he offered to buy Twitter, but dropped to 9 earlier this year.

The billionaire attributed the drop in his engagement with the public to Twitter’s algorithm problems, but the company denied that. Musk immediately fired the unnamed engineer who informed him. According to Platformer, the person who was fired was a top Twitter engineer.

It’s also not the first time Musk has fired an engineer because of his dissatisfaction. Musk once had a public argument with one of the company’s developers over Twitter’s Android app, after which he himself fired.

In mid-November 2022, the US billionaire also publicly fired an employee after this person commented that the content he wrote on social networks was wrong (Photo: WARGO/WIREIMAGE)

Elon Musk and Twitter were not immediately available for comment.