> I also can’t tell you much about whether the algorithm is optimizing for engagement, versus optimizing for Whatever Elon Wants.
It's possibly simpler than that; in this experiment he followed Musk and no-one else. When Musk took over Twitter, a lot of people claimed that they were joining Twitter just because of Musk. So if you follow Musk and no-one much else, it might not be that _unreasonable_ to infer that you're into the same sort of thing as that lot, and, like, I'd buy that the sort of people who joined Twitter solely to follow Dear Leader is into a lot of other weird nonsense.
It's possibly simpler than that; in this experiment he followed Musk and no-one else. When Musk took over Twitter, a lot of people claimed that they were joining Twitter just because of Musk. So if you follow Musk and no-one much else, it might not be that _unreasonable_ to infer that you're into the same sort of thing as that lot, and, like, I'd buy that the sort of people who joined Twitter solely to follow Dear Leader is into a lot of other weird nonsense.