Twitter’s March 31, 2023 source-code release included an identifier named author_is_elon, but that alone did not show that Musk’s tweets were boosted. A comment in the released code described author lists as tools for metrics collection and A/B testing. Musk said during a contemporaneous Twitter Spaces discussion that he was only then learning about the label.
What the “hardcoded” label referred to
The story dates to March 31–April 5, 2023, not to a new discovery about X in 2026. On March 31, Twitter announced it was publishing much of its source code, including code for the recommendation algorithm behind the For You timeline. The company called the release a first step toward greater transparency and said it excluded ad-recommendation code, training data, and model weights. Twitter’s announcement described the scope and limits of that release.
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When reporters examined the posted code, they found the identifier author_is_elon alongside similar labels for power users, Democrats, and Republicans. These names identified author categories in the code; their presence did not, by itself, explain how any particular tweet was ranked. Ars Technica’s account of the code reproduced both the identifiers and a comment describing their purpose.
What the code comment said the lists did
The comment said the author ID lists were used for metrics collection: tracking how often tweets from those authors were served and how often users saw them. It said this helped validate in A/B experiments that changes did not negatively affect one group over another. That is evidence of the purpose stated in the comment, not independent proof that every production ranking path behaved exactly as described.
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Futurism reported that an engineer described the categories as bias-monitoring mechanisms rather than a way to give a group special treatment. Senior engineering manager Brian Wichers reportedly said the labels had been added about a decade earlier and were “not too important in how it’s used throughout the code base.” These accounts explain the engineers’ stated rationale; they do not establish every way the labels may have been used across deployed systems. Futurism’s April 5 report covered the discussion and those explanations.
Did the code prove Musk’s tweets were boosted?
No. The identifier showed that the released code recognized an author category for Musk. The accompanying comment pointed to measurement and experimentation, not a ranking boost. Neither the label nor the comment alone proves that Musk’s tweets received preferential placement—or that they never did through some other mechanism.
That distinction matters because the March 31 release was partial. Twitter said it did not include ad-recommendation code, training data, or model weights, and Ars Technica noted that the posted repository could not confirm every implication about the platform’s behavior. A separate reported VIP list was not established by evidence in the released code. The strongest defensible conclusion is limited: the public code contained the label, and the code comment described author lists as instrumentation for measurement and A/B testing.
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In the reported Twitter Spaces discussion, Musk said: “I think it’s weird. This is the first time I’m learning of this by the way.” TechCrunch’s contemporaneous coverage also described the release and Musk’s reported reaction.
The disclosure was a snapshot of code made public in 2023. The sources cited here do not establish whether author_is_elon remains in X’s current production systems, so the old identifier should not be presented as a description of today’s implementation.
How the label fits into the recommendation system described in 2023
Twitter’s contemporary description placed the code within a For You recommendation pipeline. TechCrunch reported company figures from that time: approximately five billion pipeline runs per day, and a For You timeline averaging 50% tweets from followed accounts and 50% from accounts a user did not follow, with the mix varying by user. It also reported that the ranking neural network had approximately 48 million parameters. These are historical figures attributed to Twitter’s 2023 account, not current system specifications. TechCrunch’s March 31 report provides that contemporaneous context.
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