In an effort to see if it would affect how many people engaged with his tweets, Elon Musk briefly closed his Twitter account early on Wednesday morning.
The social media platform's chief executive officer was reacting to users who said that making their accounts private significantly increased the reach of their tweets.
Musk Is Testing Reported Malfunction On The Social Network
Many Twitter users have noticed a significant change in their Twitter feeds during the recent months, since the new Twitter chief came over.
Users saw a sudden influx of odd tweets from accounts they were not following or had not connected with, shortly after Musk took office, SEA Mashable writes.
Users reported that their tweets received more likes and retweets when their accounts were locked, which effectively makes their tweets private and only available to their current followers.
An account would often see lower interaction when it became private because doing so effectively prevented individuals from retweeting their tweets.
According to the CEO, there was a problem and attributed it to an algorithm upgrade that had been corrected since the reports.
Following that, Twitter users have made fun of Musk for not understanding how the platform functions, or at the very least, for not having Twitter engineers on hand to explain it to him.
It can be remembered that Musk had to start hiring engineers back in November after Twitter's altering workplace benefits and large layoffs.
This caused many programmers to leave the company, seemingly endangering the stability of the platform and causing issues.
According to a report by Ars Technica, Musk will spend the rest of the day conducting this experiment in response to conservative users.
These conservative users claimed to have conducted their own studies to demonstrate that locked accounts get more views than public accounts.
Right-wing Twitter user Ian Miles Cheong said on Tuesday that he had noticed an increase in interaction after trying this hypothesis out for himself.
Read More: Twitter Users Can Now Open Public Appeals for Suspended Accounts
Twitter Has Been Undergoing Drastic Changes Under Musk's Leadership
The Twitter CEO was previously probably the last person Twitter fans would anticipate to restrict his own account.
This is despite the fact that he claims to have bought the service to support free expression, do away with echo chambers, and encourage more conversation in the "town square."
Musk is quite active on the site, and his frequently public tweets appear to be read by audiences besides those who already follow him.
Currently, Twitter's platform popularity is largely attributable to its nearly unmatched capacity to promote messaging from even the most obscure accounts.
Before Musk took over, Twitter was known for introducing "main characters," with millions of users participating in lively conversations of trending messages.
The billionaire has recently become Twitter's most durable and well-liked main character, and his posts are practically impossible to avoid.
Musk appeared to have a lot of faith in Twitter before he started his test today, trying to demonstrate the strength of his platform by introducing new public metrics.
Related Article: Twitter Reverses 'For You' Algorithmic Timeline, Returns Original Timeline
