Elon Musk plans to release Twitter’s algorithm that filters the content users see in the “For You” tab. The code is scheduled to be made available as open source on March 31st. As is so often the case, Musk barely left a good hair on Twitter’s existing infrastructure when making the announcement.
In this case, for example, in view of the code quality, transparency is initially “incredibly embarrassing‘ he announced on Twitter. In his view, the algorithm is overly complex and would not be fully understood even internally. Users would therefore many “stupid things” discover. Patches should come as soon as problems have been identified. He expects faster improvements from the openness.
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In addition to improving the existing algorithm, Musk says Twitter is currently working on a simplified approach to recommending suitable tweets to users. This code is also to be made available as open source, but development is still ongoing.
Recommended posts as a construction site
In any case, according to Musk, Twitter wants to gain trust in this way. A necessary step, because since the takeover, the recommendation algorithm has been considered a construction site. Complaints have been accumulating about odd posts appearing in users’ feeds.
Musk has long described the recommendations as a nuisance. According to media reports, he felt disadvantaged internally, so in February he asked for a code adjustment. The result: His posts flooded the “For you” tab of the users regardless of their relevance.
In addition to the “For you” tab, Twitter also offers the classic “Following” view, which sorts Twitter posts chronologically.
