Elon Musk announced on Friday that Twitter would publish the code for tweet recommendations and make the account and tweet status visible no later than February.
“Twitter will publish tweet recommendation code & make account/tweet status visible no later than next month.”
“Transparency builds trust.”
This isn’t the first time the Twitter CEO spoken of the importance of transparency for building trust in the social media platform. In May, he pointed out that algorithms must be open source with the interventions of humans “clearly identified.” He also reaffirmed this in a Twitter thread informing users how to switch between the two feeds.
In December, Elon Musk said that the social media platform was working on a software update that would show users their true account status so they would know clearly whether or not they have been shadowbanned and the reasons why if so. The update would also allow shadowbanned users to appeal the ban.
Prior to Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform, the “Home” feed was the default feed, and users had to click the stars in the upper right corner to switch between “Home” and “Latest,” which showed the latest tweets from those a user follows. The “Home” feed showed tweets that the algorithm chooses for a user, and these include tweets from people that the user may not be following.
In a thread by Twitter Support on Tuesday, the platform announced the new changes to the feeds, including renaming them.
Twitter said that the “For You” and “Following” tabs will replace the “Home” and “Latest” tabs and would be pinned to the top of the timeline to make it easier to switch between them. No more tapping the stars icon.
Twitter rolled out this feature to iOS and web users and said that the feature was coming to Android soon.