Twitter will open source all code used to recommend tweets on March 31st | Hacker News Reader

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

twitter.com

55 pointshammock28 comments

Different way to tweet the tweet > After firing half of Twitters employees, the few that do remain do not fully understand the overly complex recommendation algorithm. I am hoping that we can crowdfund development work by making it open source.

As an aside, it'll be interesting to see what license he open sources it under.

I don't think he is doing it strictly because the remaining team can't handle the development. He talked about open sourcing the recommendation algorithm before he even bought Twitter. Back in November 2022 he said:

>One of the things that I believe Twitter should do is open-source the algorithm.

>Any changes to people's tweets -- if they're emphasized or de-emphasized -- that action should be made apparent ... so there's there's no sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation, either algorithmically or manually.

He also said the code base was very fragile. Such that any changes tended to induce many errors. Hinted that it will probably be easier to just rebuild from scratch.

It is always more fun to just rebuild. There's probably someone on the team already setting it up.

Maybe the 50000 Token Version of ChatGPT can understand it.

You have a very optimistic view of the people who worked at twitter.

Has anyone compiled a list of every promise this guy has made with a date attached and whether it actually was delivered?

Yes, at https://www.elonmusk.today/

I hope the parent commenter would comment now

There’s no way the code is sufficient to understand the behavior, right? There has to be a bunch of configuration / state involved too.

Under consumer data laws, that kind of data ought to be released perhaps

Yes, Elon is the best, Elon tweets are the best. This is the reason we see them bloody all the time.

I can't imagine this code being in a place to open source. Surely it's tied to various internal libraries and services.

That's an early April 1st joke, y'all.

I don’t think Elon understands open source. It’s very difficult to build a community and the only reason you’re going to get outside contributors is if they too have a need for the project. I’m sure the current implementation is very Twitter focused.

Maybe a generic recommendation framework could be useful?

What makes you think he wants to "build a community" or attract outside contributors?

Elon spotted the rot and bias within Twitter. From day 1 he's been exposing and expunging it. Same with the recommendation algorithm. This is about transparency and trust. It's not a traditional OSS play.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. He's an evil megalomaniac. His every action has only one goal - attempting to demonstrate he's the most brilliant person on Earth.

Psst. He's not succeeding.

Is this how people who don't follow Elon got notifications about his tweets?

Exactly right. It is about transparency. After exposing all the censorship games in the Twitter Files releases, he knows he needs to gain trust in the product. A better idea of how the feeds are generated would go a long way.

The only way he can turn it into an open source project is if he rewrites the entire project. He has hinted at possibly doing this, since the code is very fragile and breaks whenever they try to add features.

It would be great if he could turn the whole enterprise into a non-profit like wikileaks, but that is probably too optimistic.

Not true. Plenty of people will contribute because they like Elon. I know small private communities of commercial product that put in countless hours of free work to a software that is only ever to be used for that product. I'm sure people will contribute

Not sure if a community of open source dev's is what he's after here. It is more about transparency, so that people can have an idea on how they are being recommended tweets.

Open source =/= community, though, nor contributions. It just means releasing the source code with an open license

To non technical people Open Source often doesn't even mean what it means in FOSS circles. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he releases it under a license most of us on HN would consider "Source Available"

That's probably not the point. His goal is likely auditability, not getting outside contributions.

However:

> I don’t think Elon understands open source

Absolutely. Like most popular tech-wannabes he uses the term to mean something like "freely licensed". I fact he called his opening up of Tesla's patents "open sourcing" them.

As somebody who knows what "open source" actually means, I cringe at this over-use. On the other hand I appreciate that the term and the concept are gaining popularity.

That's really cool, actually.

I'm pretty interested in the dynamics of recommendation algorithms and one of the few people that think that open source solutions have too little of them.

Do people generally use the recommended tab? I'm genuinely curious.

Whenever I check it out (instead of "following"), it's abysmal. I don't know why somebody would prefer it.

If you don’t actively use it, it’s hard for it to get better

I haven't noticed much difference. Maybe a little less restricted to what I get under 'following'. The experience gets much better when you set up Lists.

Early April Fools maybe?

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