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Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

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Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#531
post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern Java actually allows `10_000` for that very reason, as does Scala ( https://scala-lang.org/files/archive/spec/2.13/01-lexical-sy... )

also javascript - https://github.com/tc39/proposal-numeric-separator

Add golang to the list.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC it was very recent, there was a Twitter engineer that was fired after explaining to Elon that the algorithm was not biased against him: https://www.salon.com/2023/02/10/petulant-elon-musk-fired-tw... Almost certainly after that event Elon had them explicitly bump his tweets in their reach.

This speculation seems mostly informed by a negative opinion of Elon. Is there any real indication he gave this instruction?

Yes that weekend everyone started seeing Elon's tweets in their timelines: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets...

You seem weirdly protective of Elon fyi

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#533
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see a way out of this with the GPT/AI able to create fake persona in an instant.

What does that matter? If people find the content engaging then it will be amplified. If not, it shouldn't be there in the first place. This whole "AI / Bot swarm" excuse is just smoke and mirrors for "I want more people to pay twitter".

If "bots indistinguisable from humans" find your "account that posts pro-russian propaganda" engaging it will be amplified onto your For You page.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? I didn't notice something like this.

Very sure. I started noticing the issue a couple of years ago (well before Musk's arrival) because I'd find myself thinking 'I haven't seen anything from ____ in a while, I should follow that person', only to discover that I was already following them and their tweets were just not showing up. New follows will generally pop up reliably, but if someone has fallen out of your regular feed you have to work to put them b…

It seems the only reason why people wouldn't show up then is that they got shadow banned or at least have some deboosting applied. So the algorithm thinks they are spam?

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#535
post #11

From https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/7f90d0ca342b92... ( "author_is_elon", candidate => candidate .getOrElse(AuthorIdFeature, None).contains(candidate.getOrElse(DDGStatsElonFeature, 0L))), ( "author_is_power_user", candidate => candidate .getOrElse(AuthorIdFeature, None) .exists(candidate.getOrElse(DDGStatsVitsFeature, Set.empty[Long]).contains)), ( "author_is_democrat", candidate => candidate .getOrEls…

Elon just said in the space "that shouldn't be there. Consider it gone"

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#536
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe echo chambers are nefarious - there's no hidden agenda involved with them. That's just how recommendation algorithms work, and it's what most people want. But if someone finds some code that suppresses recommendations from a specific political ideology across the board, that would be nefarious, IMO.

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This comment likely violates the guidelines both in form and content.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#537
post #477

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.

This is transparency theatre, not actual transparency. There's no way to actually use this limited release to understand how or why any tweet is boosted, so we're in exactly the same boat we were in yesterday.

This sentiment has high correlation to driving conclusions from a very time limited information set. This isn't the only part that is going to be posted to github.

What is the net benefit from rushing to condemn something that can only be a net positive compared to the past alternatives? I don't understand the purpose of that approach. Help me.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#538

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…

Thank you! Working on a concept for a big org on what may become a large ML-based system one day. I knew about this feedback loop issue, but was too dumb to actually remember and face this problem. :) It's all over today's rec engines -- and yet, just like the things we're not shown in these systems, the problem itself seems to become invisible. Because it requires new thinking.

Worth exploring.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#540

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.

The funny thing is that angle owes itself to Elon coming through on his promise to open source this. This is a great thing.

It would also be a total Elon move to confuse the open sourcing of Twitter's internal code with actual transparency.

You would need, at a minimum, a neutral third-party audit of Twitter's servers to conclude that the source code we see on GitHub is, in fact, the source code running Twitter. How often will they keep their GitHub repo in sync with their internal code, I wonder.

Presumably Twitter uses a version control system. But they scrubbed the history so that's also a point against their "transparency" claims. Without knowing the when and the why of changes you can't understand what you are looking at. People are pointing to that "author_is_elon" without knowing whether that was done before Elon bought Twitter or after.

But even then, git history can be faked.

> This is a great thing.

I disagree. It's the opposite. It provides the illusion of openness without the quality of openness, thus killing the debate once and for all.

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