It is a transparent approach that he has long advocated without putting it into practice. Elon Musk announced on Friday that his Twitter platform would make public the algorithms used to recommend tweets to each user. "Twitter will open source on March 31 all the computer code used to recommend tweets," said the unpredictable owner and boss of the social network.

"People will discover a lot of stupid things, but we will fix the problems as soon as we find them," he added.

"Improvements in the quality of recommendations"

Opening the service's black box was part of his stated motivations for buying Twitter last year, as was the company's "potential" and advocating for a more absolute vision of free speech. But his first four months at the helm of the network were mainly marked by waves of massive and abrupt layoffs, the flight of many advertisers, the chaotic launch of a paid subscription and technical failures.

The multibillionaire explained that Twitter's recommendation algorithms were complicated and misunderstood, even within the Californian group. "Being transparent about the code is going to be very embarrassing at first, but should lead to rapid improvements in the quality of recommendations," he said. "We are developing a streamlined approach to highlight more interesting tweets," he continued.

A measure of appeasement

The transparency measure could appease authorities and lawmakers who want to know how the platform works. Many elected officials, including Republicans, believe it is biased against them, while human rights NGOs criticize the service, especially under Elon Musk, for not doing enough to combat misinformation and harassment.

Making the code "open source" also means that other developers or potential rivals could use it.

  • Elon Musk
  • Twitter
  • Social Media
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Internet users
  • Platform
  • By the Web