Twitter is planning to open source its algorithm from next week, according to a tweet by its chief, Elon Musk.
“Prepare to be disappointed at first when our algorithm is made open source next week, but it will improve rapidly,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday.
The Twitter CEO has been supporting the idea to open source Twitter’s algorithm since even before he bought the social media platform in October.
The initiative comes at a time when Twitter has been under pressure from others in the broader open source community, including Twitter alternative Mastodon, which saw a surge in usage after Musk’s acquisition of the microblogging platform, TechCrunch reported on Wednesday.
(For top technology news of the day, subscribe to our tech newsletter Today’s Cache)
Open sourcing Twitter’s algorithm could also keep lawmakers and regulators at bay, amid concerns about how social media platforms’ content recommendations work, according to the report.
Also read |Twitter’s latest iOS update shows algorithm based “For you” by default
The U.S. Supreme Court is now probing YouTube over the role its algorithm had in recommending ISIS videos to users.
There are also growing concerns about TikTok oversight after reports revealed that the short video making platform had manipulated viral trends and even spied on journalists.
Twitter may hope to avoid similar scrutiny by open sourcing its algorithm, TechCrunch said in the report.
However, Musk is not the first Twitter executive to support open sourcing.
Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey last year expressed that Twitter should have been developed as an open and verifiable protocol.
He also shared that same idea with Musk over text messages, which were revealed during the legal process related to Musk’s litigation against Twitter when he tried to get out of the deal, TechCrunch highlighted.
Dorsey is now building that vision with Bluesky, an open source project spinning off Twitter that is developing a decentralised social networking protocol named ADX.
