Elon Musk releases algorithm for Twitter recommendations

Elon Musk is launching a transparency offensive at Twitter. At the very least, the controversial tech visionary has announced that he will disclose the algorithms used by the short message service to make recommendations. In doing so, the Twitter boss emphasizes that the algorithms are extremely complex.

Elon Musk lets his guard down

Probably the best-kept secret of tech companies are their algorithms. Whether Google, Apple or Meta – algorithms are always the recipe for success and thus also the guarantor of profit. All the more surprising is the announcement that Elon Musk has now made. The CEO of Twitter, who has been in charge since October 2022, wants to disclose an important algorithm of the short message service. It is about the algorithm that is used for recommendations for users. With this, Musk wants to show himself transparent by making it comprehensible for users what the personal recommendations are based on.

The tech billionaire wants to put this promise into practice soon, as he announced himself over the weekend. He is already getting serious on March 31 and will make the code available. As a result, IT experts from all over the world will be able to pounce on the algorithm. This should be quite exciting, as this disclosure is an absolute novelty in this industry. The background is the individual display of tweets. Those who use Twitter can also opt for recommendations as an alternative to the classic chronological display of messages. Here, the algorithm decides which tweets might be interesting for the respective user.

Musk wants to convince doubters

The algorithm itself still comes from old Twitter times. It is therefore not surprising that Elon Musk himself speaks very disparagingly about the software. For example, he describes it as “incredibly embarrassing”. However, it has been suspected for quite some time that Elon Musk himself had improvements made. A few weeks ago, for example, many users were shown more tweets from the Twitter boss in the recommendations. And that, although this was hardly the case with the original algorithm. According to Musk, this was merely a software error. In order to reinforce his own statement, he now apparently wants to go one better in order to convince even the last doubters.