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Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

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Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#801

Post by sawyna »

GuB-42 wrote: post #648
evolve2k wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elons reply “I only learned about it now!”. What a crock of shit. We literally went through reporting a few months back where he was clearly instructing the team to make sure his tweets always come up, for everyone.

I think it was more narcissistic than that. As in: "My tweets are very important, if they don't show up on top, it means the algorithm can't recognize what is important, it needs to be fixed". And the team, who probably didn't see in which way Elon Musk's tweets could be that important besides the fact that he wrote them, they just decided to give Elon Musk's tweets a boost.

Now someone is surely getting fired.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#802

Post by just-tom »

scott_w wrote: post #758
gpm wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There could be an argument for an "author is a flat earther" flag with the intention of those tweets being repeated by twitter less .

Do you think Elon bought Twitter so he can bury his own tweets?

Actually, that's a refreshing take.

(No).

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#803

Post by kaba0 »

nonethewiser wrote: post #328
qbasic_forever wrote: post #267

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?

I goddamn hope there is not much positive opinion of that scammer anywhere, but unfortunately there is still too many..

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#804

Post by kaba0 »

nicky0 wrote: post #263
kayodelycaon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The importance of Twitter was it being the primary posting location for a lot of things. A number of the artists and other creatives I know have gotten absolutely gutted by this.

Gutted about what exactly? Twitter is still there and pretty much works like before.

Except when it doesn’t because somebody was so competent and fired more than half of the engineers.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#805

Post by kaba0 »

Laaas wrote: post #134
dmonitor wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

immediately getting rid of the sparkle button is one of the few reasons i still have a small amount of faith in elon’s vision of twitter

- Open sourcing this - Lists as tabs - _Heavily_ reduced spam - Can look at Twitter without logging in I'm likely missing some other obvious/uncontroversially good changes. I still use Twitter and plan to continue using it. I am satisfied with most of his changes.

- The site often breaking as there is no one left to put out a fire - basically microtransactions that will soon boost your posts

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#806

Post by AmericanChopper »

KerrAvon wrote: post #606
mgiannopoulos wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This distinction you’re making relies entirely upon how you personally interpret the motives of the people involved. An interpretation that you’ve entirely invented for yourself.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#807

Post by iamacyborg »

basisword wrote: post #754
jurassic wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...it is only because that group disproportionately participates in behavior that is bad for the platform. That isn't a problem. That is exactly what Twitter's stance has been all along (in the pre-Elon era) and it IS a problem for the product because people being silenced due to their own bad behavior (example: misgendering transgender people) feel an injustice is being done. The rule-makers get to set the range o…

Am I misunderstanding? Are you suggesting that penalising those who misgender transgender people is unfairly disadvantaging people whose political views are right of centre?

Folks like Jordan Peterson would like you to think so, yes.

Of course, the man is essentially a walking “old man yells at clouds” meme at this point, so I’m not sure you should take anything he says with any merit.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#809

Post by evolve2k »

slim wrote: post #778
cubefox wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We literally went through reporting a few months back where he was clearly instructing the team to make sure his tweets always come up, for everyone. Feel free to give me a source for that, but I'm pretty sure that's not true.

looks like evolve2k is himself the source. maybe he was a twitter employee ?

While it was thrilling for a moment to imagine myself as a disgruntled former Twitter staff member, that is not the case and I have not been employed there.

My statement above was to read ’we’ as in as the tech community not ‘we’ Twitter staff; others have quoted some of the sources on this thread, but it was definitively reported by a few different outlets at the time.

Re: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm

#810

Post by slim »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #267
overthrow wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see the exact date author_is_elon was added. Too bad they didn't publish the commit history

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.

  Musk expressed his disappointment with engineers' work and *told them to track* how many times his tweets get recommended, one worker told the outlet.
so we know exactly when and why "author_is_elon" was added to the code
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