Elon Musk turns his Twitter account private: 'Something is wrong'

Elon Musk said he made his account private until Thursday morning.

Elon Musk on Wednesday turned his Twitter account private to test out a peculiar feature with the platform -- whether setting an account to private improves the reach of its tweets.

The tech billionaire, who bought Twitter in October for $44 billion, tweeted “Something is wrong,” in reply to a post by popular right-wing Twitter account Libs of TikTok. It detailed how setting an account to private can “vastly improve” its reach factor.

Wow… these comments… @elonmusk what’s happening? https://t.co/bcIUm8HraB

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— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 31, 2023

Soon, other users tested it to find out that views and interactions for tweets were indeed much higher (up to five times) when accounts were made private.

In order to test the theory, Elon Musk updated his account settings so that only his 127.7 million followers can see his tweets. “Made my account private until tomorrow morning to test whether you see my private tweets more than my private ones,” he tweeted on Wednesday.

Here's what other Twitter users had to say about it:

The first was locked, the second unlocked- 20 minute lead in the first. pic.twitter.com/DmC1CU1CZ1

— Jason “Storm Chaser” Nelson (@Storm4Congress) February 1, 2023

I can attest that there are people I follow that I almost never see when they're unlocked, but see them a lot when they're locked. @MelissaTweets and @andrewklavan to name two if you need data points.

— John Hawkins (@johnhawkinsrwn) February 1, 2023

Hahaha my whole feed is literally all of your replies right now there is definitely a Twitter private glitch

— CourtneyLynne (@kourtneelynne) February 1, 2023

Have you faced a similar experience? Let us know in the comments below.