Elon Musk's Locked Twitter Account Test Highlighted "Some Issues" Elon Musk locked his own account on the microblogging platform to test how it affects the engagement of his posts. He later said that there are some "issues with the system."

By Kavya Pillai

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

Unsplash

On Wednesday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk locked his own account on the microblogging platform to test how it affects the engagement of his posts. He later said that there are some "issues with the system." He added that the company would address this issue in the coming week.

There have been some complaints made by users about the platform's engagement on public and private posts. Twitter's users have brought to light a major change in their feeds which included posts from accounts they never followed and had not previously interacted with.

Some users also saw more engagement on their accounts when they locked it. This means that their posts would only be available to their pre-existing followers. If anyone else wishes to view them they would have to send a follow request.

Musk acknowledges the issue and blamed it on an algorithm update which has been corrected. Some Twitter users who had a large following for their accounts also raised the issue with very little engagement due to the changed algorithm.

A user tweeted Musk about the results of a test where he indicated that a tweet sent when his account was set to private or locked had a greater reach than a tweet posted when his account was public. Musk replied saying that this was "extremely concerning" and pledged to conduct his own experiment.

He later tweeted, "Made my account private until tomorrow morning to test whether you see my private tweets more than my public ones."

This is not the first time Musk is conducting a test since he took over that company for 44 Billion USD, last October. He had earlier taken a Twitter poll on if he should stay as Twitter's CEO and about changing the Twitter timeline.

Kavya Pillai

Former Correspondent

Growing a Business

What 18,000 American Small Businesses Can Teach You About Success

Stay curious, stay committed and keep showing up — your success story is still unfolding.

Business Ideas

70 Small Business Ideas to Start in 2025

We put together a list of the best, most profitable small business ideas for entrepreneurs to pursue in 2025.

News and Trends

Google Cloud Ramps Up AI Infrastructure in India, Eyes Local Model Deployment

The company is actively partnering with the Indian government on the INR 10,000 crore IndiaAI Mission to provide subsidised compute power to startups and researchers

News and Trends

Recur Club Announces Credit Offerings for Startups Beyond Series A and SMEs

In FY 24–25, the platform also plans to deploy an additional INR 2000 crores through its Recur Swift program for startups.