Super interesting code breakdown for the dumpster fire that is Twitter:Elon Musk released the Twitter feed algorithm on Git yesterday as open-source. I know how to read code and know Git, so I had a brief looksy.
First of all, holy hell, I can't believe he let this algorithm see the light of day. It reveals some INSANE biases which are the REAL "Twitter Files", if anyone besides engineers gets interested. My only thought as to why he publicized the code is that Twitter is a wreck and he fired most of his engineering team, the remainder of whom now can't keep up, so he's hoping that by open-sourcing the code, engineers like me will fix it for free. And indeed, you can make pull requests on his repository if you have a Git account (and I do.) I'm not about to help.
(For laymen, a pull request is when you pull the code to your local machine, alter it, and then make a request that your changes get integrated into the repository, which the owner of the repository must approve.) I use Git for version control. Meaning every change is documented and approved. Undoubtedly, Musk will task a remaining engineer with reviewing these Git pushes, and potentially approving them.
Remember when people started complaining that all they saw were tweets from Elon Musk, even though they didn't follow him? Or all they see are right-wing lunatics, even though they didn't choose to see that? There's a literal carve-out in the code to artificially boost Musk and right-wing lunatics. Narcissist much? The code also arbitrarily dumps you into "categories" like Democrat, Republican, Power User, etc. He's also artificially restricting tweets about The Ukraine and bolstering Russia. I wonder who's paying him! Not a mystery.
Every interaction with your tweets gets ranked. Every like is worth a lot. Replies and retweets are worth less. This is opposite of normal (I used to write algorithms for search engines), where a like is passive interaction, retweets and comments are active interaction, which should be weighted more heavily. Negative interactions are also weighted. If you've been blocked or reported, you're punished for that. Your tweets get seen less.
The most insane part of the algorithm (in my opinion) is that if you follow a lot more people than follow you, you get artificially suppressed as "unimportant." That means someone like you or me doesn't get seen. I follow around three times as many people as follow me, which means I effectively do not exist on Twitter. This means that bad actors and bots (who follow nobody, because they aren't human, get artificially amplified.)
Including a video or an image in your tweet artificially boosts you. Including a link to an external website (like a news site) hurts you. Misinformation gets downgraded for normal people. Blue checks boost you insanely. This effectively results in blue-checked people being able to spread misinformation with impunity. As you know, now anybody can pay Elon $8 for that sweet sweet blue checkmark, including bots and foreign actors.
Y'all. Twitter is a DISASTER. If you've used it since Musk took over, you at least suspected it. Musk is a foreign actor and at best, a narcissist. At worst, he's deliberately bolstering the right-wing looniverse (as evidenced by my personal observations, and now confirmed by inspection of his algorithm.)
All of this is not to say, drop Twitter, or to espouse an opinion of what you should do. I'm going to hang out and see what happens. I'm just telling you, as a person who writes these kinds of algorithms professionaly, what the code Elon Musk provided publicly, indicates.
— Emily Parker
― Trout Fishing in America (Neanderthal), Saturday, 8 April 2023 22:04 (one year ago) link