Twitter announced measures to improve transparency by making public some of the computer code that determines how the social media outlet recommends content, allowing users and programmers to understand how it works and be able to suggest changes to the algorithm. in a blog post titled “A New Era of Transparency at Twitter,” Twitter said it has uploaded the code to the code two code repositories on the sharing platform Github, which includes the source code for many parts of Twitter, including the recommendation algorithm that controls the tweets users see on their timelines.
Twitter said the code repositories on Github do not include the code that drives Twitter’s ad recommendations. The company also said it excluded code that would compromise user safety or privacy, as well as details that would undermine efforts to prevent child sexual abuse content on the platform.
Twitter’s move was made at the request of its boss, Elon Musk. Elon Musk previously said that code transparency would increase user trust and quickly improve the product. It would also help address concerns shared by users and lawmakers, who are increasingly scrutinizing how social media platforms’ algorithms choose what users see.
Elon Musk said on Twitter Friday that third parties should be able to analyze open-source code and “determine with reasonable accuracy what may be shown to users. But he also warned, “No doubt many embarrassing issues will be discovered, but we’ll fix them quickly!” . He also said that Twitter will update its recommendation algorithm every 24 to 48 hours based on user suggestions.
On Friday, Elon Musk and some Twitter employees held a session on Spaces, the Twitter audio chat platform, asking users to make suggestions and ask questions about how the platform’s code works. Some questioned why Twitter’s code seems to divide users into Republicans or Democrats. A Twitter employee responded that it was an old feature that was not important to the platform’s recommendation system and that the company was considering removing it.
The news comes after some of Twitter’s source code was leaked on Github, which had removed the code last week at Twitter’s request. In legal documents, Twitter asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to order Github to provide “all identifying information” related to the Github account that posted the leaked code.
