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Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

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Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#521

Post by JoshCole »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #382
sschueller wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well someone just asked about it in the live spaces[1] Elon is hosting and he said that should not be there. An engineer said afterwards it is just for metrics but then Elon chimed in again and said "we should get rid of it, it should be gone." [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1641880448061120513?s=20

Doesn't necessarily mean he didn't want it there in the first place. Why else would it be there?

There are millions of lines of code existent. There are thousands added. Your prior for it being Elon's addition should be something like 10,000/1,000,000 or roughly 1/100. The prior that it wasn't Elon's change is going to be something like 99/100.

When you add the additional information that Elon wants the code removed, but existing Twitter engineers think it appropriate to keep this actually increases the probability of it being added by the existing Twitter engineers and decreases the probability it was added due to Elon.

Obviously, these are rough numbers, but hopefully seeing any numbers at all helps you to get an intuition for the math.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#522

Post by HeckFeck »

corbulo wrote: post #201

It's disappointing the comments are so obsessed with the political angle to this that there's a total lack of appreciation (or discussion) of opening up the most influential social media platform in the world.

I have to admit I am geeking out whilst skimming source code I barely understand.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#523

Post by LZ_Khan »

phailhaus wrote: post #163

Great! But nothing is going to change until people realize that the problem is the feedback loop . It's not the recommendation engine itself, it's the fact that there's no way "out" of the feed that the engine produces. It recommends you stuff, you have little choice but to engage with it, and then it trains on that information . This is the problem with most of social media today. It is a very well known problem in…

Don't you have a choice.. to not engage with it? If you didn't like it then assuming the metrics system is working correctly, this would be negative feedback to the ML model, causing said content to not be shown in the future.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#526

Post by [deleted] »

threeseed wrote: post #478
mochomocha wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Metrics tracked in AB test. So even if it's not explicitly encoded in the algo (or implicitly through some of the features plugged in), they'll pick the winning cell as long as it doesn't hurt Elon's metrics (I'm just parroting the comment you quoted). It doesn't have to be in the algorithm for the systems to be tweaked to please Elon vanity metrics. [I've been running lots of ML AB tests over the years, some in…

That lines up with reporting from Casey Newton a few days ago where a handful of VIPs e.g. Musk, LeBron James, AOC were being used as weather vanes to understand what the algorithm was doing. It definitely isn't just metrics. Any algorithm change that negatively affected Musk was clearly not going live.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#527

Post by hraedon »

philistine wrote: post #455
emodendroket wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of self-proclaimed independents vote with one party just as reliably as registered members.

American's lax attitude towards cultivating more than two parties is literally killing the republic from the inside.

It isn't an attitudinal problem, it is the logical outcome of our political systems. In political science it is known as Duverger's law: single ballot, winner take all systems inevitably tend toward a two party equilibrium.

Changing this requires states to adopt alternative systems, which can sometimes mean amending state constitutions. It isn't easy or straightforward, and the general sense is that there are better things to spend that effort on.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#528

Post by web3-is-a-scam »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #224
zaroth wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LeBron doesn’t get $84 of value from Twitter? Definitely not a political statement going on there.

Parent didn’t say it’s not “political”. It’s reasonable for a wealthy person to feel that a system that discriminates against the poor is not a system they want to participate in. (Note that I use discriminate in the literal sense, as a simple statement of fact.)

lol you don't actually believe that's his reason do you?

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#529

Post by eldritch_4ier »

panarky wrote: post #512
roughly wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect they're tracking the red team/blue team metrics because of the political shitstorm that's been the GOP's assertions they're being silenced by The Algorithm.

The fallacy of false equivalence systematized in code. Now one side can spew as much disinfo and incitement to violence as it likes, and any algorithm change that prevents this shit from getting amplified will be rejected as bias. BSaaS = Both Sides as a Service

[flagged]

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#530

Post by fanagra32 »

corbulo wrote: post #201

It's disappointing the comments are so obsessed with the political angle to this that there's a total lack of appreciation (or discussion) of opening up the most influential social media platform in the world.

"Opening up"? You must be kidding. Nothing is open there. It's just open-washing. A few nice diagrams, but how the services _actually_ work is still hidden.
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