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Source code for the X recommendation algorithm

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Re: Source code for the X recommendation algorithm

#71

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

I browsed through it a bit and these are some details that raised questions or which I found interesting:

There's multiple mentions of slop, for example: SlopsAuthorScoreFeature in HomeTweetTypePredicates. That means everyone gets a slop score between 0 and 1, which makes me wish that it was openly visible and that people with a high slop score would get a little piggy emoji next to their name.

There's a CLIENT_TWEET_TAKE_SCREENSHOT action, which is likely used to keep track of when a (mobile, presumably) client takes a screenshot. I hadn't considered this before, but for a social media app where posts are often shared externally through screenshots, keeping track of this can give you another engagement metric.

They have two types of NSFW filters: isNsfw and isSoftNsfw, but I couldn't figure out the distinction. Other metadata types include: isGore, isViolent, isSpam, isLowQuality, isOcr.

In ContentFeatureAdapter there's a getTweetLengthType function which shows the range for each tweet type. This is used to set TWEET_LENGTH_TYPE elsewhere. I wonder if it would help your virality to switch up your tweet lengths to regularly put out tweets which hit every length category, or if it doesn't significantly affect your potential reach.

There's a hardcoded list of top-level Grok topics [0]. Just mildly interesting to see what they consider to be top-level categories. Anime has achieved a significant cultural victory by getting separated into its own major category.

The timeout values for different service request types varied a lot across the application, which makes me curious about how they settled on those numbers. This is a question I've pondered in the past but haven't gotten around to researching deeply.

[0] https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/c54bec0d4e029f...

Re: Source code for the X recommendation algorithm

#72

Post by palmfacehn »

swaptr wrote: post #66

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but why does Bluesky feel so much faster to load and interact with compared to X? On the surface, both have similar interfaces and equally rich content, yet Bluesky consistently feels snappier and more responsive, even though it’s the newer platform.

Could be from lower usage.

Re: Source code for the X recommendation algorithm

#74

Post by kej »

gyanchawdhary wrote: post #70
jezzamon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the first time I've seen someone positive about that change. My experience has been by showing blue tick users above others, the experience has become a lot more biased because it's only a certain type of person that pays for Twitter

Isn’t that a good thing that you have already created a mental filter about people who pay for it as being of a “certain type” .. the problem with ticks being bestowed upon some journalists is that they become the brokers/influencers by the virtue of simply working for a newspaper .. that power is vaporised now .. tbh the real question is why didn’t twitter pre musk implement community notes .. I mean it’s not such a…

>tbh the real question is why didn’t twitter pre musk implement community notes

They did. Community notes are just the rebranded "Birdwatch" program that predates Musk.

Re: Source code for the X recommendation algorithm

#76

Post by close04 »

anonym29 wrote: post #34
ml-anon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. The last “algorithm” release was a random grab bag of code which existed in some of the Twitter repo that might have been tangentially related to recommendations/feed. Source: worked at Twitter in ML/recsys.

[flagged]

Honest question. Would you even dare to say you work at Twitter and then spill the beans on some very public lie or misdirection? It’s trivial to match your writing style between your HN comments and your work emails to identify you. Musk is famously a very petty, bitter, and vindictive person with an easy to bruise ego.

I don’t have any knowledge of the reality inside Twitter but I also have no reason to believe the company would be transparent given the many past controversies, or that any one employee would be able to look at this code which has obvious redactions and say “everything else is definitely 100% prod” and not exactly what GP suggested.

Re: Source code for the X recommendation algorithm

#77

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

gyanchawdhary wrote: post #70
jezzamon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the first time I've seen someone positive about that change. My experience has been by showing blue tick users above others, the experience has become a lot more biased because it's only a certain type of person that pays for Twitter

Isn’t that a good thing that you have already created a mental filter about people who pay for it as being of a “certain type” .. the problem with ticks being bestowed upon some journalists is that they become the brokers/influencers by the virtue of simply working for a newspaper .. that power is vaporised now .. tbh the real question is why didn’t twitter pre musk implement community notes .. I mean it’s not such a…

Community Notes was literally built by pre-Elon Twitter: Birdwatch was first announced on August 2020, and it was initially launched on January 2021. On November 2022, Elon rebranded it to Community Notes and made it widely available.

Re: Source code for the X recommendation algorithm

#78

Post by keepamovin »

I think Elon said he would release the weights. In a video somewhere. That's what he meant - when the next major version lands, they release the previous one?

People's choices can change, maybe the economic/geopolitical reality of AI race has been impressed upon him, but I think that's what he said.

Re: Source code for the X recommendation algorithm

#79

Post by tonymet »

simianwords wrote: post #68
gyanchawdhary wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post Musk Twitter is amazing. It lets you see how stories, opinions that you support or don’t are attacked from all sides and Community noted / @grok fact checked … a lot of UX changes too .. pre Musk, the moderation / banning was biased and arbitrary (who is watching the watchers?) .. my personal fav was to see the special tick removed from journalists ..

I’m a big fan of grok fact checks.

it has potential but they need to improve the @grok UI. Twitter is just cluttered with "@grok is this true?" spam and I had to mute it.

Re: Source code for the X recommendation algorithm

#80

Post by mrguyorama »

jsheard wrote: post #54
burnte wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, he really had twitter change their code to push his tweets more.

They seem to have dialed the overt Elon boosting down now but it's still conspicuously aligned with his priorities. I just made a fresh burner account to see what the algorithm is primed to push by default nowadays, and about 80% of the feed is anti-immigration ragebait.

I think that's just an accurate and mostly genuine indicator of who is left on twitter nowadays.

The people left on twitter earnestly believe that it is better now that you can shout racial slurs at people, buy your way to the top of any chain, get literally paid for ragebait, and genuinely think this repo is meaningful.

It's a massive self selection bias.

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