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Wednesday, Aug 19, 2026

Elon Musk Just Made His Twitter Account Private, Here's Why

Elon Musk Just Made His Twitter Account Private, Here's Why

On Wednesday, the tech billionaire took to Twitter to announce that he is making his account private for a day.

Twitter boss Elon Musk has made his Twitter account private until February 2. He took to the microblogging site to inform his 127 million followers that he is making his account private for a day to test a peculiar feature with the platform.

He shared that he was making the move to test whether Twitter users would see his posts more or less following the change. Musk wrote, "Made my account private until tomorrow morning to test whether you see my private tweets more than my public ones."


The post has amassed over 7 million views. The tweet referenced a Twitter thread detailing how setting an account to private can "vastly improve" its reach factor. Tests by Twitter users found that views and interactions for tweets were up to five times higher when accounts were made private, The Independent reported.

Few Twitter users made unusual observations after trying out the trick. A Twitter user wrote, "The people I follow, whom I have on notifications, only started showing up after I set my account to private."

"I received very few likes/ replies from mutuals in the public post. It became almost unusable with the pop-ups at the top."

Musk has made his account private so that only his 127 million followers can see his tweets.

The tech billionaire took over Twitter in October for $44 billion. Since taking over, he has made significant changes including laying off almost half of Twitter's workforce, cutting costs and streamlining operations.
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