Elon Musk recently tweeted that Twitter will open source all the code used for the tweet recommendation mechanism on March 31.
Elon Musk tweeted, “Our ‘algorithm’ is overly complex and not fully understood internally. People will find a lot of stupid things, but we’ll fix them as soon as we find them. We’re developing a simplified way to deliver more engaging tweets, but that work is still in progress, and it will also be open source. Providing code transparency may be embarrassing at first, but it should allow for a rapid improvement in the quality of recommendations. Most importantly, we want to earn your trust.”
According to reports, the open source code means that developers, including those who aspire to become its competitors, can make their own improvements to the algorithm. Since Elon Musk bought Twitter last October, the platform has suffered layoffs, the loss of advertisers, and criticism for a lack of content moderation. But there is currently no alternative to Twitter, and global leaders, politicians, celebrities and businesses have no choice but to continue to communicate through the platform.
After several rounds of layoffs in which more than two-thirds of its workforce was laid off, Twitter is now left with only a skeleton staff, vulnerable to downtime and false and harmful content. Elon Musk’s attempts to wean Twitter off of advertising revenue and to make subscriptions a new way to make money have not worked out well so far.
Elon Musk also tweeted today that “Twitter is growing rapidly, with the total number of minutes spent on the platform by all users reaching 8 billion per day.”
