Elon Musk to make Twitter algorithm public

Twitter owner Elon Musk on Friday confirmed in a tweet that the social media platform will open source its code used to recommend tweets.

Algorithm goes open source at noon Pacific Time

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2023

"People will discover many silly things, but we'll patch issues as soon as they're found!" Musk cautioned in a tweet

It was in February, Musk brought up that he will make the Twitter code open source while replying to a user on the platform. “Prepare to be disappointed at first when our algorithm is made open source next week, but it will improve rapidly,” he said.

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

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 21, 2023

Then on March 18, Musk made it official by announcing it.

Twitter will open source all code used to recommend tweets on March 31st

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2023

"Providing code transparency will be incredibly embarrassing at first, but it should lead to rapid improvement in recommendation quality," he added.

"We're developing a simplified approach to serve more compelling tweets, but it's still a work in progress," Musk said.

Making a code open source simply means that the code will now be publicly accessible. Anyone, including rival companies would be able to see, modify and distribute Twitter’s algorithm that it uses to recommend tweets to users.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also wished for something similar for the company, saying “Twitter should have been developed as an open and verifiable protocol”, according to tech news website, TechCrunch.

 

“He also shared that same idea with Musk over text messages — this came to light during the legal discovery process related to Musk’s litigation against Twitter when he tried to get out of the deal. In the texts, Dorsey said Twitter should be based on an ‘open source protocol, funded by a foundation,’ to which Musk replied, ‘super interesting idea’,” the report added.

 

This comes almost six months after Musk took over the social media platform in a $44-billion deal. In these months, Musk has made major changes at the microblogging website including mass layoffs, Blue subscription service.