Unusual Whales

Elon Musk offers $1 million bounty to find "botnets" sources after Twitter algorithm made open-source

Unusual Whales -

Per BI

Elon Musk recently released Twitter's now-open-source algorithm, and with it, the public could dig deep into the algorithm and understand how it functioned. Upon analysis, it was found that the algorithm could affect a user's reputation score by creating "negative feedback loops."

So far, Twitter user Steven Tey, the Senior Developer Advocate at Vercel (per LinkedIn), has found two important takeaways from Twitter's source code.

  • Your following to follower ratio matters.
  • @TwitterBlue subscribers do get a boost in the algorithm.

A lengthier thread was then provided with other observations spotted in Twitter's algorithm.

  • Following-to-follower ratio is important
  • TwitterBlue subscribers got a boost
  • Twitter identified four user groups (power, democrat, republican, elon musk) and compared how often their tweets are being impressed by others
  • Factors that determine if a tweet makes it to a user's "For You" tab include: like/RT, click on tweets and stay for over 2 mins, check user's profile
  • Negative feedback loops affecting "reputation score" include: getting blocked, muted, abuse reports, spam reports
  • When needed, government can intervene with the algorithm via "GovernmentRequested"
  • Algorithm can recommend candidates or suppress Election event misinformation
  • Images and videos get a 2x boost

The list goes on, with Steven detailing everything in his Twitter blog.

The findings of these points were due to Musk's initial decision to take the company's algorithms open source on March 31. This fulfilled his previous announcement in February when he said he would make Twitter's algorithms open source and available for the public to see.

Recently, the changes on Twitter can be spotted with Reuters deleting a tweet about Tesla after being corrected by CommunityNotes. The initial title of the deleted article was "Tesla misses delivery estimates for the first quarter," and now, the publication has changed its statement to "Tesla posts record quarterly deliveries," with Tesla being able to deliver 422,875 vehicles in the fourth quarter.

See flow at unusualwhales.com/flow.

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Business Insider

Steven Tey on Twitter

Steven Tey blog