Why making Twitter’s algorithm open source may not be a great idea

Elon Musk made his intentions of opening up the algorithms even before officially taking over Twitter, he has now rekindled the news with a tweet

Hyderabad: As carefully as a chef guards his recipe, an IT company guards its algorithm for the software. And it is vital to do so because that is what keeps them in the business.

However, that does not seem to be a priority for Twitter CEO Elon Musk as his tweet on Wednesday hints at open-sourcing Twitter’s algorithm.

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Although Musk made his intentions of opening up the algorithms even before officially taking over Twitter, he has now rekindled the news with a tweet.

It started with Musk tweeting, “Say what you want about me, but I acquired the world’s largest non-profit for $44B lol,” when a user commented, “Right. Now open source it, then we’ll be truly impressed.”

The non-profit he is referring to is the micro-blogging website. Replying to the user, he wrote, “Prepare to be disappointed at first when our algorithm is made open source next week, but it will improve rapidly!”

A little earlier than this, Musk also said that Twitter will provide users the ability to adjust the algorithm to their “closer match”, in the “coming months”.

By making the algorithm for Twitter open source, the code on which the site runs will be publicly accessible which anyone can see, modify, and distribute as they see fit.

Large parts of the internet run on open-source software — most famously OpenSSL, a security toolkit used by many, which suffered a major security breach in 2014.

When Twitter’s algorithm becomes public, there is a strong possibility that it will be misused. According to an article by the ‘MIT Technology Review’ last April, open-sourcing Twitter’s algorithms would potentially allow bad actors to find vulnerabilities to exploit, adding that if “they get better at gaming the system, which could make one of Musk’s other stated goals, “defeating all spam bots”, even harder.”

It could also make the running of the platform messier, as it would give other unaccountable stakeholders power to affect the way it operates.