In his message that began with “Very important to fix your Twitter feed” because “You are being manipulated by the algorithm in ways you don’t realize,” Musk listed three steps that users can take to see the workings of the mysterious algorithm, drawing a response from former CEO Jack Dorsey.
Very important to fix your Twitter feed:
1. Tap home button.
2. Tap stars on upper right of screen.
3. Select “Latest tweets”.You are being manipulated by the algorithm in ways you don’t realize.
Easy to switch back & forth to see the difference.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022
(This message brought to you by the Illuminaughty)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022
Dorsey quickly chimed in.
“it was designed simply to save you time when you are away from app for a while,” he wrote, “pull to refresh goes back to reverse chron as well.”
Very important to fix your Twitter feed:
1. Tap home button.
2. Tap stars on upper right of screen.
3. Select “Latest tweets”.You are being manipulated by the algorithm in ways you don’t realize.
Easy to switch back & forth to see the difference.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022
Musk later clarified that he didn’t intend to suggest anything nefarious but that it was an intentional feature that had the result of manipulating what users see.
I’m not suggesting malice in the algorithm, but rather that it’s trying to guess what you might want to read and, in doing so, inadvertently manipulate/amplify your viewpoints without you realizing this is happening
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 15, 2022
Musk also made the case for open sourcing Twitter’s code, “Not to mention potential bugs in the code. Open source is the way to go to solve both trust and efficacy.”
Not to mention potential bugs in the code. Open source is the way to go to solve both trust and efficacy.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 15, 2022
Musk’s message on the algorithm came the day after he announced that was contacted by Twitter’s legal department for violating his non-disclosure agreement with the company by revealing the sample size used to check for bot accounts.
“Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100!” Musk wrote in a Friday tweet, “This actually happened.”
The tweet that got him into hot water came when Musk sent out a link to a Reuters report on the estimation of 5 percent of users are fake accounts, stating that the deal is “temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users …”
“To find out, my team will do a random sample of 100 followers of @twitter,” he added. “I invite others to repeat the same process and see what they discover..
The sale is far from done and there will certainly continue to be multiple legal roadblocks thrown up to foil Musk’s effort to take Twitter private in order to clean it up and restore the digital public square to its original state before the censors took over.
