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Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

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Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#681

Post by nonethewiser »

runako wrote: post #433
nonethewiser wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems dumb of them. Cost is trivial and their competition that isn’t so politically motivated will have a much further reach. The smart move would be silent on the policy change, pay, and support rival platforms as they can. Instead they will eventually pay and look like they lost.

For the NYT to verify their official accounts plus those of their reporters (using the Twitter Blue Affiliations feature) would be $1m annually. This, for a budget line item that has heretofore been $0. In this economy, that's a reach. I don't think the NYT is worried about "reach."

> I don't think the NYT is worried about "reach."

Then why are they on Twitter?

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#682

Post by [deleted] »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #532
nonethewiser wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#683

Post by KyeRussell »

908B64B197 wrote: post #620
tormeh wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what it means to let another country own your social media. Their ideas and memes unconsciously get preferential treatment. This is maybe not a good thing, but it is what it is.

People can always use their countries' social media (and I assume many do!). But it's indeed an interesting fact that people seem to specifically seek American tech and social media. And honestly, there's no shortages of foreign nationals commenting on American politics (and it's a good thing, it's their right thanks to the first amendment!).

This is a joke, right?

The vast vast vast vast majority of people use “American” social network because they are the social networks that exist. The US is undeniably the main exporter of SaaS products. See: the incumbents freaking out that China is getting a turn in the front seat. I’ve never once heard of anyone seeking ‘American tech’, except for some punchline in an anti-Soviet joke or movie.

Foreign nationals can comment about American politics because the US doesn’t have jurisdiction over their speech, notwithstanding the back and forth over whether social media companies are liable for disseminating such content in the first place.

A material part of why the USA is seen as The Country in Western culture, and a noted big player in other cultures, is because of the power it projects via the media. That includes both Hollywood exports, and social media.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#684

Post by human »

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?

If I were Elon, first thing I would have done is ctrl+f “elon”…

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#685

Post by nonethewiser »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #532
nonethewiser wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’m pretty neutral on musk. His fanboys are crazy but by and large they aren’t here so there isn’t much opportunity to challenge them.

So much has been concluded about him here without any evidence, instead grounding it in the premise that he’s rotten.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#686

Post by nrb »

dorkwood wrote: post #675
xmprt wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the value of measurements but how does measuring tweets from an individual user help?

If engagement on the tweets of that user goes down after a change has been implemented, you can roll back the change to prevent that user from being negatively impacted.

What if engagements around that user naturally declined, perhaps due to that user going off the deep end. Wouldn’t this just serve to bias the algorithm toward propping up the exposure of that user? Do they even care about the control so long as that user’s engagement is up and to the right?

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#687

Post by drstewart »

yurodivuie wrote: post #613
correlator wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is clearly a lot of information to share. It's worth considering this could be step 1 of n as opposed to assuming the worst possible intention.

It's healthy to have a normal amount of cynicism. They released it for a reason. "The goal of our open source endeavor is to provide full transparency to you, our users, about how our systems work." Why be transparent (or try to appear transparent)? To convince people to trust your platform (or to recruit - which seems to be another goal of the post). Why would Twitter want or need to do this now? Well, there is a bi…

[flagged]

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#688

Post by drstewart »

random_cynic wrote: post #665
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.

[flagged]

It's actually shocking to see some of the discussion and understanding of the code here. I'd say the "part-time programmers" qualifier is even generous.

Sad to see.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#689

Post by OJFord »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #211
cubefox wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very cynical take. They should be commended for publishing recommendation code at all, which no other major social network does.

Well if they say “we will open source the algorithm” and then what they really open source is a little bit of slightly relevant code that doesn’t allow us to understand the algorithm, then what we can deduce is that they are trying to weasel out of public commitments. I can’t say for sure if that happened, but if they made a clear promise and then did something else, it’s perfectly reasonable to call that out.

Devil's advocate though: imagine you were to open source (probably with quite a short deadline) some 'algorithm' used in whatever you work on, but the rest should stay private; how would you go about that?

I don't think it's easy, there's inherently some interface(s!) where it's a hand-wavey 'get the thing from the private bit', and defining that sensibly is hard, and if you try to do it well will probably lead to a lot of meetings, scope creep, etc. - and as far as that goes it's not easy anyway, since it's highly technical and implementation-specific yet also a management/policy decision to make.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#690

Post by katamarimambo »

zaroth wrote: post #169
bradly wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe LeBron James said recently he isn't going to waste his money on a blue checkmark, so it should be interesting to see what stays and what goes.

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

Lebron famously uses the free version of Spotify. Maybe he just does not see the value of paying for the blue mark.
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