So now engineers working on the algo can track whether their launches will lower Elon's tweet visibility. Looks like those remaining at Twitter have a knack for corporate survival.

> Looks like those remaining at Twitter have a knack for corporate survival.

If Green Cards quotas suddenly became available how many would stay?

Yeah, surely the fan-boys who remain at Twitter are interested in lowering the visibility of Elon, not the opposite.

I read that as being able to make sure they don't lower his engagement with a release

Makes you wonder how they would deal with a reduction in Twitter users.

I think they meant that Twitter developers can make sure their most recent changes won't get them fired by lowering his visibility.

When your visa is on the line, you’ll do anything

Engineers who work at twitter can easily find another job in the US.

Can they? I don't know, but I imagine that at this point, everyone still working for Twitter is there because they don't have any other realistic option.

Most people working there are looking for other jobs. It is not hard to find another job, but in this market it is hard to find one that pays the same. A lot of people have 4 year stock grants and annual refreshers, pushing their compensation very high which can only be matched at other tech companies, which currently are not hiring much.

Only because you are blinded by your own biases. There are people there that think it will be the next spacex or Tesla

That's assuming too much in my opinion. Not everyone has the same or similar opinions regarding their work or Elon, even if it's hard for you to believe.

I was basing my speculation purely on the working conditions there, not on any supposition about people's attitudes about their work or Musk.

> even if it's hard for you to believe.

It's not hard for me to believe at all.

It's harder with visas, because you're not gambling if you can find another job, you're gambling if your employer can acquire a visa in time for you to not be deported.

Posted on another reply, but according to this one link [0] you can start the visa process at a new company while still employed at your current job.

0: https://usvisagroup.com/changing-jobs-h-1b-visa/

Right, so it's still justified to feel bad for visa workers in this case, because they are stuck at an abusive workplace because of circumstances of their visa.

even considering all the layoffs other companies are doing?

What do you think is the percentage of companies who did layoffs or have hiring freezes vs companies who are hiring high caliber engineers?

H1-Bs are harder to get approved these days and a lot of companies don't want to go through the effort/cost to do so

According to this one link [0], H1B "tranfers" are not subject to visa caps. Plus you can search for new jobs and start the process while still employed.

0: https://usvisagroup.com/changing-jobs-h-1b-visa

With forced RTO and "hardcore" mandates, it's difficult to find 6+ hours of time to interview at other companies (assuming there are any open visa sponsorships available).

Companies can't revoke visas of employees... That's just not how H1B Visas work. Yes they can be fired, but they can go find another job and keep the Visa.

He is the full owner of Twitter. It's his company, so nobody is going to fire him as CEO for over-promoting his tweets.

The users can and often do fire the CEO.

That makes sense; I guess that means Elon is considered a "group" now.

I know there's a joke about this regarding his ego and there's certainly some truth in that, however it's also quite believable that after a deployment he might have noticed the popularity of his tweets going down (since he no doubt checks his reach), so I can kind of understand how he might see "republicans", "democrats" and "celebrities_it_makes_sense_to_check_this_with_my_account_as_i_am_a_very_active_user" as core categories that need to have their reach balanced.

We don't need to speculate on this. It sounds like he did actually fire engineers over his tweets getting less engagement than he wanted.

https://www.platformer.news/p/elon-musk-fires-a-top-twitter-...

Honestly, if you read behind the lines, it sounds like the employee was intentionally making a joke about it at his expense in front of a bunch of people, and I think a lot of CEOs would take that badly as this is effectively the same thing as calling your boss egocentric.

But, we do have a bit of code that measures metrics on his account, so can we find the bit of code that increases the engagement on his account?

> “When you’re asked a question, you run it through your head and say ‘what is the least fireable response I can have to this right now?’” one employee explained.

Reading between the lines, Musk sounds like a giant baby.

> But, we do have a bit of code that measures metrics on his account, so can we find the bit of code that increases the engagement on his account?

There doesn't need to be. When they run AB tests, it's possible that they'd pick the winning cell if it makes the Elon metrics look better.

Even if the algorithm doesn't do anything explicit about boosting him, it can be tweaked through AB testing to favor him.

You mean A/B testing of weights/biases?

No, the "weights" of your model are trained from the input data. What is usually AB tested are hyperparameters of the model, or different "flavors" of (model+input data).

What people are implying is still unsubstantiated though. The engineers on the Twitter Space say that this is to ensure that changes they make do not bias one category over another, they don't say that it's in order that they can make discretionary updates to bias towards Elon Musk.

Maybe after every update to the model, they check these stats to ensure that they haven't biased towards Elon Musk, and if so roll the change back.

? Considering Elon as its own category is a bias.

> it's also quite believable that after a deployment he might have noticed the popularity of his tweets going down

He did notice it and it was treated as a 5 alarm fire, with a Musk cousin sending 2 am slack messages (on a Monday!) to Twitter engineers to urgently fix Elon's reach[1].

1. https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets...

The proper way to do that is create a pool of celebrities and monitor them. Not just the CEO's account.

For very active accounts, I assume that's what the "vits" or "power user" one is for. Or, heck, "vits" might actually be what you said.

ChatGPT suggests: Vitriolic accounts.

Still smells to high heaven to me. Not the Elon part, I don't really care about that. But collecting metrics about "republican" vs "democrat" sounds like a particularly bad set of priorities at work.

This exactly.. But without the models or policies we can only infer, which give plausible deniability.

Can't say I'm shocked overall, but it's strange to see it so 'on the nose'

I suspect it plays into this stuff: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/22/twitter-a...

They wanted to answer the questions of "is twitter biased against Republicans" so they measured it, turns out they favored republicans.

> sounds pretty suspicious.

Sounds toxic to me

About 40% of US voters are not registered with any political party, so at least they will avoid whatever this triggers.

So you imagine these tags are set by looking account names up on state voter registration lists?

Well, if not, then the tags have such a large error bar as to be meaningless.

Or the data is assumed good and used dangerously.

And then there is the rest of the world.

but the people who care about stats are usually american politicians. they can present them with this data. (and use Elon as a control LOL)

Anyone that has worked in social network recommendations (raises hand) knows that they'll be accused of being politically biased, particularly if the recommendations aren't explicitly promoting biased news sites on the Right. (e.g. The Associated Press[0] is leftist propaganda! Where's unbiased news like Gateway Pundit[1] or InfoWars[5]?!) So data scientists and engineers will get pulled in to investigate the latest ref working[2][4], and this will let them easily determine that no, there is no bias.

None of this will matter though, because the complaints are made in bad faith.[2][3]

You may say this is biased comment, but I’m not going to engage in false equivalences, when the outrage and results of the outrage aren’t symmetrical, especially when the most popular and influential right wing television channel, Fox News, has been caught red handed knowingly spreading conspiracy theories for ratings.[6]

[0] "Associated Press is the least biased according to both Democrats and Republicans." https://www.businessinsider.com/most-biased-news-outlets-in-...

[1] "The Gateway Pundit (TGP) is an American far-right fake news website. The website is known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateway_Pundit

[2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-22-mn-26779-...

[3] "Internal report finds ‘virtually identical’ rates of conservative and liberal topics, but guidelines updated to ‘exclude possibility of improper actions’" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/24/facebook-...

[4] "There is some strategy to it [bashing the ‘liberal’ media]. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is ‘work the refs.’ Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one." -- Rich Bond, 1992 Republican Party Chairman https://www.americanprogress.org/article/think-again-working...

[5] “InfoWars is an American far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Alex Jones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfoWars

[6] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/all-the-texts-fox-ne...

Well, there was this:

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/rml-polit...

That doesn't say they did anything about it. Just that right wing complaints had no substance.

In fact, in just over a year from the publication of that blog post, Twitter -- as a matter of official company policy -- would be promoting the unfounded belief that Twitter engineers and scientists were actively engaging in a propaganda campaign against conservatives.

The exact opposite reaction of what I'm looking for.

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/14/1142666067/elon-musk-is-using...

I think it says a lot about the complaints. Some people just can't stop crying wolf to get attention

It’s not just to complain. It’s an actual political strategy.