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- This is Future Tech,

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where each week we discuss the
good, the bad, and the ugly

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of where tech is headed
in 2023 and beyond.

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Apparently, Elon Musk
doesn't want his tweets

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to be less popular than
President Joe Biden's tweets.

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We are joined now by Blake Montgomery,

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he's a deputy editor
at Gizmodo, and, Blake,

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we learn this week,

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and I don't know why anybody'd
be surprised, but apparently,

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Elon asked his engineers
to, like, boost his tweet?

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- Yeah, so he saw that
during the Super Bowl,

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Elon tweeted, "Go Eagles!!!"

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A bunch of emojis.

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Tweet didn't do super well.

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He deleted it, the Eagles lost,

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and he saw that Joe Biden's
tweet, to the same effect,

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did a lot better than his, and he got mad.

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He does have more
followers than Joe Biden.

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And so he got Twitter
engineers to boost his tweets.

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- So this also comes as we
learn that perhaps Elon Musk

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even potentially fired an engineer

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after the engineer said, you know,

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"Maybe people just aren't interested

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in what you have to say anymore."

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- Yeah, his popularity has
been declining, I would say.

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He's been tweeting,

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he's been CEO of Twitter
for several months now,

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it's not quite so crazy as it used to be.

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Things aren't...

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Employees aren't getting
fired by the thousands.

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The strategy isn't shifting
wildly every single day.

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So it's sort of like
when Trump was president,

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people got used to the
crazy tweets after a while,

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even though they remained
largely the same.

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We're sort of used to
what Elon has to say.

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We sort of know what he's gonna say.

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Things aren't that different

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or are changing quite so
rapidly as they used to be,

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and so his popularity has
declined, his engagement is down,

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and that's what that one engineer said.

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And Elon said, "I don't like that.

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I'm gonna fire you."

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And he did.

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- So what we're also learning, you know,

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more about like what Elon's
been talking about this week,

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he has been in Dubai at a summit,

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and we're actually learning
that he finally says

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maybe he'll step down as
CEO by the end of the year,

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as soon as Twitter is stable enough.

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- Yeah, and that's a big if.

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Like, the big question there
is what does stability mean,

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because last year, during
an all-hands meeting,

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he said that bankruptcy's not
off the table for Twitter,

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which is a pretty dire thing to say

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for a $44 billion company.

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But now he's crowing a lot

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about high engagement numbers,

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he said Twitter is gonna be profitable,

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either in this quarter or the next,

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and so maybe that indicates

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there's a little bit more stability,

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there's a little bit more, kind of,

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that things might just
be, like, less insane.

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Twitter still has less
than half of the employees

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that it used to;

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I don't quite know how it
could continue to function.

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I've certainly noticed in my
feed it's a lot more boring.

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I use it a lot less.

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- So it seems like Musk, though,

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is trying to make it less boring,

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because he even kind of
encouraged other CEOs

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and politicians at this
conference in Dubai

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to be more outspoken and
to speak their minds,

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which we've seen backlash for some folks.

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- I mean, Elon has been
sued over his tweets

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to the tune of millions
and millions of dollars.

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He always won,

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but he just got out of a
really high-stakes trial

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in San Francisco about
his tweets about Tesla

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and saying funding secured
for taking it private,

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when that didn't happen.

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It's hard to imagine another
CEO saying, "I wanna do that."

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- (chuckling) Exactly.

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Well, we'll continue to
follow kind of the nonsense

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that is Elon Musk sometimes.

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For more information,
check out gizmodo.com.

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(gentle music)