Elon Musk to open up Twitter’s algorithm to public

Elon Musk has pledged to publish Twitter’s internal algorithms within days as part of attempts to turn the social media company around.

The tech billionaire said he would make Twitter’s internal code “open source”, meaning anyone can view it.

Elon Musk has bemoaned the quality of Twitter’s engineering and has fired more than half of the company’s staff since taking over the social network last year.Credit: AP

Publishing the code provides a chance for independent engineers to review it and offer modifications and improvements. Open source development is often used in early stage technology development to speed up changes and fix bugs.

Musk said: “Prepare to be disappointed at first when our algorithm is made open source next week, but it will improve rapidly!”

The billionaire has bemoaned the quality of Twitter’s engineering and has fired more than half of the company’s staff since taking over the social network in a $US44 billion ($65 billion) deal last year.

The Tesla chief executive has demanded sweeping changes at Twitter since taking charge, despite cutting many of its top engineers or prompting them to resign.

In the months since taking over, Musk has introduced new features allowing users to see how many people view their Tweets, rolled out a paid-for subscription version of the service and changed the layout of the app.

A recent change demanded by the billionaire accidentally blanketed the service with tweets from Musk’s account for a period.

The promise to open up the algorithm comes as watchdogs and politicians around the world demand greater access to the “black box” of code that decides what content different social media users see.

UK regulators have called for standards that would enable algorithmic auditing so internal code can be assessed by professionals.

Officials have also suggested allowing users access to feedback on why they were shown certain adverts or posts.

The EU’s Digital Services Act is also going to demand social media giants such as Facebook explain to users why they saw certain “recommendations” in their online feeds.

The EU’s AI Act, meanwhile, has demanded high-level assessments of the most risky applications of artificial intelligence.

The Telegraph, London

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