Twitter Releases Recommendation Algorithm on GitHub, Asking Users to Find its Flaws

Isaiah Richard, Tech Times 31 March 2023, 09:03 pm

Twitter wants your help in its latest post on GitHub, with the company posting its Recommendations algorithm on the platform, an official release from the company. The company's goal is to get help from the public in finding flaws and problems with it, and hopefully receive assistance in enhancing its features, which may be influenced by its lack of engineers.

Earlier this week, Twitter was hell-bent on catching the leaker of its source code on GitHub, with a subpoena to force the platform to reveal the identity of the person behind it.

Twitter Releases Recommendations Algorithm on GitHub

(Photo : Scott Olson/Getty Images)

In the latest upload from Twitter on GitHub, the company publicly released its Recommendations algorithm to the world, and it is not a leak, as it is legitimately the platform that uploaded this on the code repository website. A Twitter Space involving Elon Musk discussed the reason behind this upload, with the CEO claiming that they need help in finding issues and improving the code.

Several Twitter users already find recent reports tied to the code, with Jane Manchun Wong sharing her discovery on the platform. Here, she provided a screenshot of the algorithm code where Elon Musk's tweet was labeled as "author_is_elon," and other users were labeled as "republican," "democrat," or a "power user."

This centers on the previous issue about a VIP list that its algorithm is secretly boosting for the public to see.

Elon Musk, Twitter Wants Your Help to Find its Flaws

In a recent blog post by Twitter, it claimed that it was indeed a legitimate move from the company to bring the Recommendations algorithm on GitHub, detailing that it needs help to find its flaws and get help from the public.

This may also be an opportunity where the public could bring recommendations to the platform on how they want the algorithm to work, and tweak it to what is generally accepted, instead of what the company offers.

Twitter and Recent GitHub Issues

The famous short word social media platform's source code was recently leaked on GitHub, and the company revealed this in a filing, with a copyright infringement notice on the stolen code. This said piece of information is significant to the company, as it is a code that centers on the very foundations of the company, to make it work.

Twitter then obtained a subpoena for GitHub, one that forces the company to reveal the identity behind the leaker called "FreeSpeechEnthusiast," an anonymous uploader of the said code. This now forces GitHub to reveal the person behind it or give the information behind this uploader to the company with a certain deadline for them to comply.

The leak on GitHub is of massive sensitivity to Twitter, with a part of its pillar taken away from them and shared online.

Many users already downloaded and modified the said source code, which Twitter is also tracking as of the moment. With this, Twitter would seem like a company that would not upload anything on GitHub amidst this, but it did with the recent Recommendations algorithm posted on the platform, seeking help from its users to enhance its features for them.