Elon Musk Unblocks Everyone He’s Blocked On Twitter Over The Years (Including Me)

I noticed a funny thing on Twitter earlier today: I saw Elon Musk on my newsfeed. This might be a regular occurrence for most people on the social media platform, as he is a prolific tweeter, but Musk did indeed block me in 2019. Musk has apparently decided not to block me anymore, and as it turns out, I wasn’t the single.

Musk confirmed on Monday night that he has unlocked everyone he has locked out over the years. And it likely has something to do with Musk’s recent frustration with not getting enough engagement on the service he paid $44 billion to acquire.

“I have deleted all locks from my account (shouldn’t affect anyone else),” Musk tweeted on Friday in response to a tweet speculating about the change.

Interestingly, Musk didn’t block me because of anything I wrote him on Twitter. The CEO of Twitter blocked me in December 2019 after I wrote an article for Gizmodo about how Musk was dining in Malibu and drove the Cybertruck in its first appearance in the wild. Musk hit a pole as he left the restaurant – a pole that read “no left turns” as he made a left turn. I poked fun at the vehicle and its driving ability in the story, but I didn’t send Musk the story or interact with him. But I realized I was blocked not long after the story was published. He clearly saw the story and reached out to me on Twitter to make sure I could never see his tweets again. Or so I thought.

Musk has recently received complaints from high-profile accounts, including right-wing commentators like Andy Ngo and Catturd2, that they weren’t seeing the same kind of reach they normally get on the messaging service. Likes and retweets dropped, according to those people, and Musk, always the customer service representative for his companies, promised to look into it.

“They screwed up the algorithms on @Twitter so much that everyone is completely invisible and engagements are almost down to nothing. It’s almost not worth being here anymore,” tweeted Catturd2 end of last month.

“This shouldn’t be difficult. Take out the F-king algorithms and shadowbans so we can see each other!” Catturd2 continued.

Musk investigated this last week, holding a meeting with engineers to find out why people on the platform were reporting less engagement. Musk reportedly asked what was going on, noting that he had seen his own engagement recently, but the billionaire was not happy with the response he received. One of the engineers apparently told Musk that he didn’t see any technical reason why their engagement fell through, and speculated that it could have something to do with the public simply being tired of his antics, according to a report by the news site of Platformer technology. Musk fired the engineer on the spot.

Musk seems convinced that there are only technical reasons for his lack of engagement on Twitter. After all, he’s constantly stealing only the best content from his legions of fans. Musk recently asked users to “like” a Hyundai car ad, unusual only because the advertised car is an electric car – a direct competitor to Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles. But even this interaction produced incredibly bad results. Musk’s tweet had more likes than the ad.

As I mentioned before, there were a lot of conspiracy theories swirling around Musk when he was forced to buy Twitter in October 2022, including the idea that he was trying to influence the 2022 midterm elections for Republicans. But this latest move to unblock everyone he’s blocked over the years is further evidence for my theory about why he actually bought Twitter: Musk simply wants to be adored by millions of people, and Twitter is a great way to pursue that. this dream.

Musk currently has over 128 million Twitter followers and has probably added more than a few by mass unblocking so many people today. And while I’m not sure what the future holds for Musk’s tenure at the social media company, I can predict that everything he does will be in the service of chasing more adoration and more fans.

It’s a tired old saying, but it’s absolutely true. You cannot buy love. Even if you are one of the richest people on the planet.