If the deal does go through, Musk has said his goal is to “unlock” Twitter’s “extraordinary potential,” but his suggestions for specific changes for how to do that have arguably been vague. A key focus of his has been bolstering free speech on the platform, and his suggestion for algorithms is central to that effort.
But making public the algorithms that shape what you see on Twitter won’t by itself do much to make Twitter a more transparent company, according to artificial intelligence and open-source software experts. Even if it does ultimately help address some distrust that critics have in Twitter’s content enforcement actions, moving in this direction could also create a new set of risks for Twitter.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment from CNN Business. Twitter declined to comment.
The limitations of Musk’s plan
Even those who can understand the code that goes into an algorithm don’t necessarily understand how it works. Consider, for example, how there’s often little more than a basic explanation from tech companies on how their algorithmic systems work and what they’re used for. The people who build these systems don’t always know why they reach their conclusions, which is why they’re commonly referred to as “black boxes.”
Enabling anyone to see the site’s code is “a bit senseless,” said Vladimir Filkov, a computer science professor at the University of California, Davis, because very few people can understand how Twitter’s code base works to produce what they see on their screens.
“Open sourcing something by definition means you can see the code, but it doesn’t mean you can understand the policies or influence the policies that lead to that code,” said Filkov, who develops tools to help developers run more effective open-source software projects.
That said, those who can understand it would be able to figure out how Twitter decides which tweets to show users, said Ariel Procaccia, a computer science professor at Harvard University whose studies include artificial intelligence and economics.
“In those circumstances, the company had better make sure their algorithms are fair, as it would surely be held accountable if they weren’t,” Procaccia said. “I believe this would be a net positive for users.”
Filkov thinks it would be really useful to take a page from what other open-source projects often do alongside their code: Publicly list the policies that lead to that code.
“Understanding those policies would be easier than understanding code,” he said.
A new set of risks for Twitter
Apart from the effectiveness of open sourcing Twitter’s algorithms, there’s also the question of what, exactly, would be released to the public along with code.
If Twitter were to open-source just a machine-learning algorithm it uses to decide what is and is not allowed on the platform, for example, but not the training data that was used to inform that algorithm, it would be “pretty meaningless,” said Allison Randal, a board member at the Software Freedom Conservancy and at the Open Infrastructure Foundation. It gets stickier if you consider training data, though. If that training data includes private tweets, releasing it would lead to “massive negative privacy implications,” she said.
Making Twitter’s algorithms public wouldn’t necessarily lead to any changes on Twitter, however. Users wouldn’t be able to make any changes to the code that runs the social network unless Twitter enabled such actions (such as by deploying a change to all users, or by letting individual users futz with the code that controls their personal accounts).
“Users would of course be able to copy the code and modify it, but such changes would not affect the algorithms deployed on Twitter itself,” Procaccia said. “It’s highly unlikely Twitter would even consider deploying changes made by non-employees.”
While making its algorithms publicly available could increase trust among users, it could also give Twitter’s competitors an edge. As Procaccia noted, competitors could copy and roll out Twitter’s algorithms.
It must also be done carefully to avoid security breaches, Filkov said. He thinks releasing code publicly would need to be accompanied by an effort to ensure the code base is more secure.
“Understanding the code really means understanding the faults in the code also,” he said. “So someone who is a bad actor can certainly take advantage of knowing the code and exposing the platform to risks, which may include taking over accounts or exposing the platform to misinformation.”