Elon Musk has made quite a bit of world news in the last couple of years, especially with his recent takeover of social media giant Twitter. And a new announcement by him is likely to cause even more waves.
As you know, Musk is a huge promoter of transparency and free speech. And unlike most, he doesn’t care what side of the aisle that speech is spoken from.
In fact, that is why he claims to have taken over Twitter, to begin with. He was seeing a huge problem with the way the company was censoring certain users and content, all of which seemed to be more conservative-leaning.
So he bought the company, fired a bunch of people supposedly responsible for said censorship, and is now working to restore dignity and respect in the social media industry.
Part of that process was announced on Friday when Musk took to Twitter to say that, come March 31st, he will “open source all code used to recommend tweets.”
What this means for those of us not so technologically advanced is that on that date, Musk will make the algorithm used by Twitter to suggest posts to your feed – and supposedly hide others – public.
According to him, the current algorithm used is “overly complex” and may contain some rather “silly things.”
Apparently, the plan is to reveal the code, let the public weigh in on it, and then fix any and all issues found. Musk says the result will be a much more “simplified approach” and one that will hopefully “serve more compelling tweets.”
Even more important is the fact that in the process of this algorithm analysis, Musk says he and his employees will be determining just how the source code manipulates public opinion. “In the months ahead, we will use AI to detect & highlight manipulation of public opinion on this platform.”
To say this is huge, particularly for a social media company, is pretty much the understatement of the century, as it will reveal how the company decides what is seen by users and why.
Now, if only we could get other social media platforms to do the same.
