The CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk, has made some of the platform’s source code public including the recommendation algorithm. The recommendation algorithm source code makes users and programmers understand how the platform recommends content to Twitter users.
Twitter’s Recommendation Algorithm Source Code Is Now Available on GitHub
As promised Musk did release Twitter’s recommendation algorithm to two repositories GitHub, as well as a write-up explaining what the recommendation algorithm actually does. Musk said in the Spaces session; “It’s going to be an evolving process. I wouldn’t expect it to be a nonstop upward movement… but we’re very open to what would improve the user experience.” “Our initial release of the so-called algorithm is going to be quite embarrassing, and people are going to find a lot of mistakes, but we’re going to fix them very quickly,” Musk further added.
Explaining the ranking tweets, the Twitter team said that the platform attempt to extract the best 1,500 tweets from a pool of hundreds of millions. Today, the For You timeline consists of 50% [tweets from people you don’t follow] and 50% [tweets from people you follow] on average. “Ranking [tweets] is achieved with a ~48-million-parameter neural network that is continuously trained on tweet interactions to optimize for positive engagement.” Twitter wrote.
Code Transparency to Increase Users’ Trust
Elon Musk said that making the source code public will increase user trust and lead to rapid improvements in the product. Musk said that third parties should be able to analyze the open-sourced code and determine, with reasonable accuracy, what will probably be shown to users.
Also read: Twitter Says Parts of its Source Code Were Leaked Online
