Different way to tweet the tweet
> After firing half of Twitters employees, the few that do remain do not fully understand the overly complex recommendation algorithm. I am hoping that we can crowdfund development work by making it open source.
As an aside, it'll be interesting to see what license he open sources it under.
He also said the code base was very fragile. Such that any changes tended to induce many errors. Hinted that it will probably be easier to just rebuild from scratch.
It is always more fun to just rebuild. There's probably someone on the team already setting it up.
I don't think he is doing it strictly because the remaining team can't handle the development. He talked about open sourcing the recommendation algorithm before he even bought Twitter. Back in November 2022 he said:
>One of the things that I believe Twitter should do is open-source the algorithm.
>Any changes to people's tweets -- if they're emphasized or de-emphasized -- that action should be made apparent ... so there's there's no sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation, either algorithmically or manually.
I don’t think Elon understands open source. It’s very difficult to build a community and the only reason you’re going to get outside contributors is if they too have a need for the project. I’m sure the current implementation is very Twitter focused.
Maybe a generic recommendation framework could be useful?
That's probably not the point. His goal is likely auditability, not getting outside contributions.
However:
> I don’t think Elon understands open source
Absolutely. Like most popular tech-wannabes he uses the term to mean something like "freely licensed". I fact he called his opening up of Tesla's patents "open sourcing" them.
As somebody who knows what "open source" actually means, I cringe at this over-use. On the other hand I appreciate that the term and the concept are gaining popularity.
Not true. Plenty of people will contribute because they like Elon. I know small private communities of commercial product that put in countless hours of free work to a software that is only ever to be used for that product. I'm sure people will contribute
To non technical people Open Source often doesn't even mean what it means in FOSS circles. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he releases it under a license most of us on HN would consider "Source Available"
Not sure if a community of open source dev's is what he's after here. It is more about transparency, so that people can have an idea on how they are being recommended tweets.
What makes you think he wants to "build a community" or attract outside contributors?
Elon spotted the rot and bias within Twitter. From day 1 he's been exposing and expunging it. Same with the recommendation algorithm. This is about transparency and trust. It's not a traditional OSS play.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. He's an evil megalomaniac. His every action has only one goal - attempting to demonstrate he's the most brilliant person on Earth.
Exactly right. It is about transparency. After exposing all the censorship games in the Twitter Files releases, he knows he needs to gain trust in the product. A better idea of how the feeds are generated would go a long way.
The only way he can turn it into an open source project is if he rewrites the entire project. He has hinted at possibly doing this, since the code is very fragile and breaks whenever they try to add features.
It would be great if he could turn the whole enterprise into a non-profit like wikileaks, but that is probably too optimistic.
I'm pretty interested in the dynamics of recommendation algorithms and one of the few people that think that open source solutions have too little of them.
I haven't noticed much difference. Maybe a little less restricted to what I get under 'following'. The experience gets much better when you set up Lists.
As an aside, it'll be interesting to see what license he open sources it under.