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Wednesday, April 27, 2022
A more transparent algorithm
By now you probably know that Elon Musk is buying Twitter (TWTR) for $44 billion, pending regulatory and shareholder approval, of course.
The Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX CEO, and richest person on Earth depending on the day, has already suggested a number of changes to the platform including a controversial plan to ease content moderation to allow more kinds of speech. Critics say doing so will simply turn Twitter into a cesspool of hate speech, disinformation, and harassment.
I’ve previously written about how easing moderation could blow up in Musk’s face, jettisoning users and advertisers from the platform. But let’s, for a moment, focus on at least one potentially positive change Musk has suggested for the social network — making the algorithms that power the service more transparent for researchers and users.
Academics and regulators have been asking social media companies to open up their algorithms for some time. That transparency could strengthen Twitter in the long run by explaining the guidelines used to create the algorithms and whether they favor one group over another.
“That could give a degree of legitimacy to Twitter that a lot of these social media platforms don't have, because the decisions are in a black box that we don't know about,” explained Mike Horning, associate professor of multimedia journalism in the Virginia Tech School of Communication.
Of course, there are potential pitfalls to revealing Twitter’s algorithms, including giving malicious actors the opportunity to game the system.
A better understanding of what makes Twitter tick
Simply put, algorithms are a series of clearly defined instructions. In other words, there’s no secret man behind the curtain pulling a series of levers that generate your Twitter feed.
Still, algorithms themselves aren’t without inherent bias. That’s because no matter how hard a programmer or coder tries, they’re only human. And just as developers can make mistakes when coding that can be exploited by malware, developers can accidentally introduce their own bias into algorithms.
Regulators, lawmakers, and critics of all stripes have called on social media companies to better explain their algorithms so users have insight into why they’re seeing certain types of content.
The thinking is if Twitter can explain its algorithms, users will be able to trust the service more than competitors’ offerings that don’t include the same level of transparency.