Elon Musk Fired X Engineer After Being Told He Wasn’t Popular Enough — Explosive New Book Reveals Meltdown Behind the Scenes
In a revelation that has stunned Silicon Valley, a new book claims Elon Musk fired one of his top engineers at X (formerly Twitter) after being told something he didn’t want to hear — that his tweets weren’t performing well simply because he wasn’t as popular as he thought.
The shocking incident is detailed in Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, written by journalist Jacob Silverman, who describes an increasingly erratic and image-obsessed Musk in the early days of his $44 billion Twitter takeover.
According to Silverman, Musk gathered a group of engineers and advisors at the company’s San Francisco headquarters shortly after buying Twitter in 2022. Furious over what he saw as low engagement numbers on his posts, the billionaire reportedly lashed out in disbelief.
“This is ridiculous,” Musk said, according to those present. “I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”
In response, one of Twitter’s principal engineers presented Musk with hard data — and a Google Trends chart — showing that his popularity had actually declined dramatically across the internet in recent months.
That’s when, Silverman writes, Musk “lost it.”
“You’re fired. You’re fired,” Musk reportedly snapped — dismissing the engineer on the spot in front of his peers.
The firing, which allegedly took place during a mass staff meeting, set off a wave of anxiety among employees who quickly realized that challenging Musk’s ego could cost them their jobs.
The Birth of the “Musk Algorithm”
According to the book, that single confrontation marked the beginning of Musk’s crusade to make himself the centerpiece of his own platform.
Silverman alleges that shortly after the firing, Musk ordered a team of roughly 80 engineers to “fix” his engagement numbers — even sending out a 2 a.m. emergency message through his cousin James Musk, demanding an immediate algorithm overhaul.
The result, the author claims, was the infamous “For You” feed many users now see: a timeline where Musk’s posts are prioritized above all others.
“The For You feed became a mirror of Musk’s interests,” Silverman writes. “It was filled with the right-wing accounts he followed and the culture-war narratives he amplified.”
Musk himself never publicly confirmed this manipulation, but his posts began appearing with striking frequency across users’ feeds — even among those who didn’t follow him.
From Free Speech to Personal Power
When Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, he promised to restore “free speech” and eliminate what he called “woke censorship.” But Silverman’s reporting paints a different picture — one in which Musk turned X into a tool to amplify his political views and silence critics indirectly through algorithmic favoritism.
The billionaire’s behavior, Silverman argues, reflected a larger trend of “digital authoritarianism wrapped in tech populism.”
A Billionaire at War With Culture
The book’s release comes amid Musk’s latest controversy — this time over his call for people to cancel Netflix after discovering that the platform’s animated show Dead End: Paranormal Park includes LGBTQ+ characters.
After a conservative account shared a clip from the series, Musk posted:
“This is not OK.”
He later doubled down, accusing Netflix of “pushing pro-transgender propaganda” toward children and urging his 226 million followers to drop their subscriptions.
The show, which premiered in 2022 and was canceled after two seasons, features Barney, a gay transgender teenager, and Norma, a bisexual autistic girl. Despite its cancellation, the clip went viral again in October after being reshared on X — reigniting debate over representation and media responsibility.
The Trillion-Dollar Man
Meanwhile, Musk’s personal fortune continues to skyrocket. As of this year, his net worth briefly surpassed $500 billion, putting him halfway to becoming the world’s first trillionaire.
Yet despite his financial empire — from Tesla and SpaceX to Neuralink and X — Silverman’s book suggests that Musk’s deepest obsession isn’t Mars, AI, or EVs.
It’s attention.
“For all his genius and ambition,” Silverman concludes, “Musk’s greatest fear is irrelevance. He doesn’t want to be the richest man on Earth — he wants to be the most talked about.”
And if firing an engineer for telling him the truth is any indication, he’s willing to rewrite the entire internet to make sure of it.
