If Elon Musk succeeds in his $43 billion takeover, he wants Twitter’s algorithm to be public to ensure the platform is fair. But his proposal probably represents a gross oversimplification of how it would work to make that data public, researchers say.
were introduced or reintroduced in Congress that focused explicitly on the software programs that decide what people see on social media platforms. Efforts are also advancing to regulate artificial intelligence and algorithms globally.When social networks such as Facebook and Twitter were brand new, there wasn’t enough content to warrant need for a complex
algorithm, which is essentially a set of rules similar to a mathematical equation that help parse through content and determine what is most relevant to an individual user. But as hundreds of millions of users began joining and posting billions of pieces of content, the companies began writing software that could learn what users were most likely to click on and then sort their feeds accordingly.Now, companies such as Facebook, video app TikTok and Twitter all use some form of algorithm to figure out what to show users. And it means that not every user on a social network sees the same thing.
The complex math that most companies use is often called “machine learning,” which is at its core a very fancy form of pattern recognition. A computer program can’t tell whether a particular tweet is funny, interesting or valuable. But if it looks at millions of tweets and a bunch of factors, such as who liked it, shared it and retweeted it, it can begin to predict which tweets are likely to get attention.
There are other ways of improving transparency that are more practical, the experts said, some of which Twitter is already doing. Some critics have called on social media companies to simplify their algorithms so that when there are issues, like perceived biases toward specific groups of people, they can be more easily addressed. Others have called for independent audits inside the companies.
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