- Twitter has responded to all press inquiries with a single poop emoji since March.
- Elon Musk tweeted that going forward, Twitter would instead respond with a "We'll get back to you soon" infinite loop.
It's the end of an era: Twitter no longer auto-replies to press emails with a single poop emoji.
It's not clear what prompted the change, but it could be that Elon Musk — who is 52 — now has his "adult in the room," as Bloomberg put it in May, after hiring NBCUniversal ad chief Linda Yaccarino to take over as Twitter's CEO.
If you email press@twitter.com now, it instead sends the more polite: "We'll get back to you soon."
Twitter started the poop emoji auto-reply in March, months after Musk took over the company and executed widespread layoffs that included nearly the entire communications department. Between Musk's takeover and the dawn of the emoji auto-reply, most reporters' emails to the company went unanswered.
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2023
Musk has long been vocal about his distaste for journalists. He doesn't seem to be a big fan of communications departments, either. Instead, he often opts to make announcements and respond to press about him or his companies on Twitter. Tesla, where Musk is co-founder and CEO, dissolved its entire PR department nearly three years ago.
He is a big fan of juvenile humor, however. He routinely cracks jokes about "420" and "69," once changed Twitter's sign outside its San Francisco headquarters to read "Titter," and most recently challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a "dick-measuring contest."
The new automated response to from press@twitter.com is decidedly more polite, but it may not be any more helpful to journalists.
Musk tweeted that the new response would be played on an "infinite loop."
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2023
To Insider's request for comment, Twitter emailed back: "We'll get back to you soon."
We won't be holding our breath.