Twitter brings its ‘open source algorithm’ to life and explains how it powers tweets

Twitter continues to recalculate decisions in the midst of a financial crisis that seems insurmountable and keeps the company’s interests on the line. When Elon Musk announced his intention to buy in April 2022, he publicly announced a series of modifications to the core of the social network to create “open source code” that allows users to customize terms of use on the platform. After half a year of running a company that made decisions at the expense of free use of the service, the businessman announces the publication of a code that selects which tweets will be displayed on timelines.

“These models are designed to answer important questions about the Twitter network, such as “What is the likelihood that you will interact with another user in the future?” or “What are communities on Twitter and what are the most popular tweets in them?”, specify from a social network. “Accurate answers to these questions allow Twitter to offer more relevant recommendations.”

In a post published this Friday, this recommendation stream includes 3 instances: collecting popular tweets from various sources, classifying them using machine learning, and a filter that blocks viewed tweets, NSFW content, or content associated with banned accounts.

The For You tab will post tweets after an average analysis of 1,500 tweets to determine 50% of accounts you follow and 50% of accounts you don’t follow, optimizing recommendation based on content interaction (like count). likes, retweets or replies).

With this proposal, Elon Musk hopes that “independent third parties will be able to help determine what will eventually be shown to users.” The idea behind this announcement is to strengthen Twitter’s terms and conditions so that developers can better customize the environment.

“Enforcing code transparency will be incredibly confusing at first, but it should lead to a rapid improvement in the quality of recommendations,” mentioned in another tweet.

What does this mean for Twitter?

This declaration is affected in several ways. For starters, this could mean broad access to independent developers and those who work on other platforms that compete with Twitter.

In this way, Musk can ensure continued community support after several deadlocks that have fueled tensions between Twitter and bot makers on the platform. A few months ago, Musk announced that there would be fees for the Twitter API, but then recalculated in favor of certain automated projects on the social network that couldn’t afford the advertised prices for such access.

Another positive aspect of this proposal is the peace of mind of regulators before being run by Twitter, behind closed doors and without the obligations that a public participation company has by law. For years, recommendation algorithms on sites like TikTok, Facebook and YouTube have been criticized by lawmakers who say they produce manipulated results in some cases.