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Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

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Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#601

Post by f38zf5vdt »

bagels wrote: post #599

"Written by the Twitter Team" I found it interesting that there is no attribution. Most other companies list the authors on engineering blogs (eg. Facebook, Uber, etc.) This topic seems to draw the attention of unhinged people, so I suppose I wouldn't want my name on it either.

No one wants to go to jail for Elon, who has been flagrantly violating FTC orders.[1] There's a good chance the commit history and authors may attest to that.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3928219-musk-was-denie...

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#603

Post by threeseed »

db48x wrote: post #551
threeseed wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you think the code looked like that prior to Elon's purchase? I suspect that there was another name there before. Separately, which of these groups do you think that they use as a control?

> I suspect that there was another name there before

Who ? Musk is unique in being obsessed with being liked and relevant.

All of the other social CEOs including Porag and Jake have never really cared that much. And none of them participated in contributing content anything close to what Musk does.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#604

Post by realjhol »

kevingadd wrote: post #489
threeseed wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only anecdotally. But ever since Musk took over the amount of US political content has significantly increased in particular from the right despite me not living in the US. It's hard to tell whether previously political content was weighted less and Musk has removed those controls or whether they are now weighted higher.

Some of the power users Musk reportedly had boosted are specifically right wing political posters, like catturd2. But then he's also boosted some high profile left leaning politicians, so it's not exclusive. It does mean you're more likely to see right wing American political content either way, which has to be annoying for people outside of the US. https://gizmodo.com/twitter-algorithm-aoc-ben-shapiro-cattur...

Why do you believe it would be annoying to us?

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#605

Post by wardedVibe »

sva_ wrote: post #331
CathalMullan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only used for metrics, apparently. [0] /** * These author ID lists are used purely for metrics collection. We track how often we are * serving Tweets from these authors and how often their tweets are being impressed by users. * This helps us validate in our A/B experimentation platform that we do not ship changes * that negatively impacts one group over others. */ [0]: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/7f…

Ahh, the group of Elons. I was wondering why I see so many tweets by him, and what his "Group's" impression quote is. This is actually pretty hilarious.

Thankfully they haven't added a "no mute Elon" feature. Yet.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#606

Post by KerrAvon »

mgiannopoulos wrote: post #593
astrange wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He only said that later; he seems to be working on a "say we'll do feature and then change it all after people yell at him for weeks" process.

Sounds like moving fast and adjusting to user feedback, usually something commendable in tech, right?

No. There's an implied willingness to listen to people in the first place when you're agile in response to feedback. You shouldn't have to bruise Elon's ego to get him to do not-stupid things.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#607

Post by philosopher1234 »

KarlKemp wrote: post #573
db48x wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the code looked like that prior to Elon's purchase? I suspect that there was another name there before. Separately, which of these groups do you think that they use as a control?

There is absolutely no reason to believe there was another Single user getting this treatment before. The Elon-case was just copy & pasted as an ego-stroking hack.

i think he means trump, and i think it would've been strategically wise to give trump special treatment (tho probably not ideal)

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#608

Post by lapetitejort »

astrange wrote: post #473
dd36 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why measure something if you don’t intend to change it?

So you can make sure not to accidentally change it.

And if one party trends more towards violent extremism, they get boosted the same as before?

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#609

Post by jdnordy »

tric wrote: 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…

github link now show a warning at the top of the page:

> This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository.

Is this new? Perhaps Twitter already removed the code from their main branch? Or was this just a joke from the beginning?

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#610

Post by noizejoy »

hraedon wrote: post #527
philistine wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> single ballot, winner take all systems inevitably tend toward a two party equilibrium.

I'm not convinced it's quite that simple.

For example, Canada also has a first-past-the-post electoral system - yet political parties here have come and gone. And continue to do so.

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