[HN Gopher] Twitter will open source all code used to recommend ...
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Twitter will open source all code used to recommend tweets on March
31
Author : dgrin91
Score : 89 points
Date : 2023-03-18 21:18 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nitter.bird.froth.zone)
(TXT) w3m dump (nitter.bird.froth.zone)
| t344344 wrote:
| It would be great to have a commit history, bugzilla and content
| of database.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I'm interested what the format of this will be (if it ever
| happens).
|
| There's never just "an algorithm", there might be a model, there
| might be a bunch of feature extraction code, there might be a
| server that runs it all, but none of these would be that useful
| in isolation, it's likely that all would be needed to be able to
| get an accurate idea of the behaviour of the system. But, as Musk
| says - no one really understands it all, so even then is that
| really useful?
|
| What may be more useful is releasing a set of policies, or
| product decisions about recommendations. Not necessarily code
| that implements them, but the ideas and _values_ of the system
| and the people building it. The code would likely only be an
| approximation of that, but the policies /decisions are really the
| part most people can or will engage with.
| vishal0123 wrote:
| Just because you can't run it doesn't mean it wouldn't be
| useful. This likely will give insight on the kind of modelling,
| experiments, goal function, deployment methods, resiliency etc.
| And you could easily reverse engineer policy decision with
| code(IMO), but other way is not possible.
| laverya wrote:
| I really hope this slips a day and releases April 1st instead.
| totalhack wrote:
| Translation: we can't figure out a good way to do this. Let's get
| community feedback/help.
| [deleted]
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This is something he said he'd do before buying Twitter.
| [deleted]
| muglug wrote:
| This is such a weird thing to do.
|
| Are they going to take pull requests? Or will they just publish a
| read-only code dump?
|
| Will they include Git history? If not, how will anyone hope to
| understand the code that Twitter engineers themselves apparently
| don't understand?
|
| Also are they publishing the spam detection algorithms? That's
| implicitly part of the recommendation system, but I bet it's a
| separate service.
| operator-name wrote:
| > People will discover many silly things , but we'll patch
| issues as soon as they're found!
|
| Like maybe? I'm sure it'll get a lot of eyes, so I guess
| they're hoping for some free labour?
| eh9 wrote:
| Bold of you to assume they've paid their GitHub bill
| seydor wrote:
| i m sure it's de rigueur to diss Musk, but this is smart for
| business. Twitter's recommendations arent that great and i doubt
| they re such a big driver of traffic (i use the chronological
| mode and it s not much different). The EU will now have to eat
| its paper, cause they are trying to pass laws about this, and the
| EU has solely called Musk to testify in the parliament. If true,
| this pulls the rug under a lot of very opinionated people
| rvnx wrote:
| Smart ? Isn't it a risk that Twitter (the company) gets
| litigated because it has done illegal or unfair things in the
| past ?
|
| If some politics discover that Twitter has influenced in one
| way, they may be able to sue for example.
|
| Or if there were illegal discriminations.
|
| Also it makes it much easier for scammers to game the
| algorithm.
|
| The smart move would be to do nothing, as nobody has ever asked
| for Twitter's ranking algorithms.
| seydor wrote:
| I doubt they will release that stuff. probably just some core
| sorting routines
|
| > as nobody has ever asked for Twitter's ranking algorithms.
|
| Actually many many people have. And this is good PR for his
| marketing department
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Well, that'll be interesting. I wonder if this will reveal how
| Elon's tweets are given special weighting?
| rvnx wrote:
| pseudo-code:
|
| if following: rank += 10
|
| else if elonmusk rank += 9999999
|
| else rank = 1
| tonetheman wrote:
| [dead]
| Sebguer wrote:
| Ah, yes, Elon promising a deadline for a release. Those always
| hit on target.
|
| Even better that there's absolutely no indication of what this
| will actually look like.
| stametseater wrote:
| At least he's not soliciting pre-orders this time.
| misssocrates wrote:
| Over optimistic estimates is how you know he's a real engineer.
| themitigating wrote:
| Or an idiot
| LanceJones wrote:
| It wouldn't be HN without the requisite 3- or 4-word digs
| at Elon Musk.
| themitigating wrote:
| Because he's an idiot
| BirAdam wrote:
| Yeah. Almost all engineers I know (including myself) have a
| tendency to be overly optimistic about how long something
| will take.
| archgoon wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| antiquark wrote:
| [flagged]
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Elon also said he would resign as CEO
| [deleted]
| esperent wrote:
| A renowned liar with a huge audience makes a claim and suddenly
| we're seeing it presented as fact all over the place. Where have
| I seen this before?
| drexlspivey wrote:
| [flagged]
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This is good news. Give credit where it's due.
| jeromegv wrote:
| You give credit when it's done. Not on announcements.
|
| He already promised it "next week" a while ago.
| LanceJones wrote:
| I still get a laugh from all those people who insisted Twitter
| wouldn't last days... let alone months without having some major
| outage. Wrong, all.
| x86x87 wrote:
| elon? Is that you?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-down-thousands-us...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/06/tech/twitter-website-down/ind...
| jsheard wrote:
| February 21: _Twitter will open source the algorithm next week_
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1628122949185159168
| lapcat wrote:
| It's like the Seinfeld episode where they're waiting 5-10
| minutes for a restaurant table.
|
| March 31 is suspiciously close to April 1.
| wnevets wrote:
| FSD Teslas will be out next year [1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/zhr6fHmCJ6k
| rrix2 wrote:
| SpaceX will put humans on Mars by 2024 [1]
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-humans-on-mars-
| in-...
| cidergal wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| KomoD wrote:
| Link to the normal site instead of whatever that dog slow site
| is: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1636835209587949570
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Dang, can we get the url updated to point to this?
| danpalmer wrote:
| Looks like it's a Fediverse server that mirrors Twitter.
| INTPenis wrote:
| It's nitter, it's a privacy respecting frontend to twitter.
| Has nothing to do with the fediverse.
|
| And I agree, linking it on HN is just a childish way of
| showing you're not down with Twitter. Don't force your views
| on others.
|
| I run my own nitter instance for a group of friends, the
| secret is to never link it publicly because the traffic will
| destroy it.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Ah that's a shame it's not actually integrated into the
| fediverse, it would be nice to be able to reference Tweets
| and Twitter users.
| MiguelX413 wrote:
| That's exactly what
| https://github.com/NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive is, their
| purposes are distinct
| jonas-w wrote:
| Yeah, its just a slow instance. This [0] one seems to be
| faster. But yeah, they get "destroyed" easily, the same for
| piped/invidious or libreddit.
|
| [0]: https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/elonmusk/status/16368352
| 095879...
| MiguelX413 wrote:
| Linking to the proprietary websites would be forcing
| something on others, not linking to user-respecting
| mirrors.
| jonas21 wrote:
| When INTPenis calls you childish, that's when you know
| you're really being childish.
| KomoD wrote:
| Yeah and it's insanely slow, 37 seconds to load the web
| manifest, 35 seconds to load the HTML document and ~20
| seconds per image
| bradreaves2 wrote:
| Do they know that March 31 is actually a real day?
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Hush, April Ludgate might hear you!
| [deleted]
| wise_young_man wrote:
| Tesla FSD is also coming any day now too.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Our "algorithm" is overly complex & not fully understood
| internally. People will discover many silly things , but we'll
| patch issues as soon as they're found! [...] Providing code
| transparency will be incredibly embarrassing at first, but it
| should lead to rapid improvement in recommendation quality.
|
| Sounds like Elon wants to crowdsource the analysis work.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| After having fired many of the devs, and the remaining ones not
| figuring out what all this is about, this looks like a
| desperate (or smart?) move to fix things while not spending a
| cent...
| valevino wrote:
| Why you say that the remaining developers are not able to
| understand the algorithm?
| layer8 wrote:
| It's literally in the quote above:
|
| > Our "algorithm" is [...] not fully understood internally.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The interesting question is: can it work?
|
| Unlike with the software itself, there was never a serious
| attempt to open-source such algorithms in the big social
| media space. Obscurity was the undisputed king.
|
| I would be glad if this attempt actually worked out. Sunlight
| is said to be the best disinfectant. But there will be a lot
| of bad actors trying to nudge the resulting algorithm
| somewhere in a subtle way. I wonder if all of them can be
| detected.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Sounds like a smart decision. A lot of people care about this
| and would like input. So much so that they will work for free.
| I fail to see why this is an issue from Musk's perspective or
| from mine as a Twitter user.
| bakugo wrote:
| Love it when people post links to nitter/mastodon/etc instances
| that can't handle the traffic from HN because their extreme
| hatred of Elon Musk stops them from making rational decisions.
| stametseater wrote:
| nitter is simply a better browser interface than twitter
| itself. It doesn't burn up my CPU doing god knows what or
| interrupt my reading with popups asking me to create an
| account.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It is plainly, demonstrably worse in this case.
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(page generated 2023-03-18 23:00 UTC)