Does someone at Twitter have a thumb on the scales when it comes to Elon Musk’s tweets? If so, they’d better hope he doesn’t go through with the acquisition of the social media giant.
According to a series of posts by one of Musk’s online super-fans, the Tesla and SpaceX co-founder’s tweets stopped loading after a short scroll.
While the source could ordinarily be discounted as biased, at least two publications confirmed there were load issues with Musk’s tweets and replies — and at least 80 percent of respondents in a Twitter poll also said they were experiencing problems with the feed — and Musk himself called the reported bug “very strange.”
(As Musk continues with his takeover bid of the social media giant, The Western Journal will be here with the latest news and analysis of what it’ll mean for free speech online — all from a Christian, conservative viewpoint you won’t find in the mainstream media. If you support and appreciate our coverage, please consider subscribing.)
Steven Mark Ryan, the Musk fanboy in question, was the first to mention the strange phenomenon.
“Hey @elonmusk, twitter is FKING you,” he wrote. “Dear everyone, SCROLL down on @elonmusk’s tweets & replies and tell me….. DO THEY STOP LOADING????”
In a poll, almost 80 percent of users said yes, they did.
2/ Do @elonmusk‘s tweets stop loading after a short scroll for YOU too?https://t.co/fTZsotxZci
— stevenmarkryan (@stevenmarkryan) May 31, 2022
Ryan subsequently posted a video to Patreon about his experience with the Musk-centric bug. On Twitter, he said “the replies are all ‘same here, tweets won’t load.’”
“The thing that’s fk’d about this is NO TRANSPARENCY,” Ryan wrote.
“Twitter FKs users without consent (there’s a word for that, isn’t there…?) and doesn’t tell anyone what they’ve done. Users have NO RECOURSE and most never even KNOW they were—or are still BEING—FK’d. Not cool.”
“Hoping soon after this tweet thread is posted this ‘bug’ is fixed, but I’m not counting on it,” he added.
4/ The thing that’s fk’d about this is NO TRANSPARENCY.
Twitter FKs users without consent (there’s a word for that, isn’t there…?) and doesn’t tell anyone what they’ve done. Users have NO RECOURSE and most never even KNOW they were—or are still BEING—FK’d.
Not cool.
— stevenmarkryan (@stevenmarkryan) May 31, 2022
5/ Hoping soon after this tweet thread is posted this “bug” is fixed, but I’m not counting on it.
— stevenmarkryan (@stevenmarkryan) May 31, 2022
In a reply, Musk said, “Very strange indeed!”
Very strange indeed!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 31, 2022
At least two publications confirmed that — whether it was a Twitter employee meddling in the feed of their potential future boss or merely a bug — there were issues with Musk’s tweets.
The U.K.’s Daily Mail said it “confirmed that Musk’s tweets older than 11 hours briefly stopped loading for some users, but the glitch went away on its own after repeatedly refreshing the page for around 30 minutes.”
Should Elon Musk take over Twitter?
However, the outlet noted that other users hadn’t experienced the same issue with Musk’s tweets.
The New York Post reported, meanwhile, that it “confirmed at the time of writing that his feed does not display any replies that are older than 17 hours and the earlier tweets only showed up after adjusting the settings to display only public tweets.”
Of course, Musk might not be taking over Twitter after all; the $44 billion deal is reportedly on hold as he asks for proof of its claim that less than 5 percent of its user base is comprised of spam bots. Musk has estimated that they make up almost 20 percent of the platform’s 229 million users, almost four times what the social media giant claims.
Nevertheless, messing with Musk’s Twitter account likely won’t bode well for anyone within the company should Musk take it over — if, of course, the account was messed with by a petty software engineer.
