I wonder if this time X’s pledge to open-source its algorithm will stick.
Over the weekend, X owner Elon Musk announced that X will soon publish all of the algorithmic code for X’s news feed and ads, so that it can provide more transparency around how its systems decide what each user sees in the app.
As per Musk:
“We will make the new X algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed.”
Which, at least in theory, could be a major step towards helping people understand how X’s system decides what you see, though whether X actually follows through is another question, given that Elon has pledged the same before.
Back in 2023, shortly after taking over at the app, Elon Musk published Twitter’s feed algorithm in GitHub, and vowed to keep the code updated, so that anyone could see how posts are ranked and displayed.
Except, Twitter (now X) wasn’t as transparent as it could be, with various elements not included in the published data, while the code info itself was never updated, despite Musk and team making various changes to it over time.
Though that didn’t seemingly matter to Musk, who continually referred to the published code data as a demonstration of X’s transparency.
Maybe that’s the plan of attack here again, with X set to launch its latest code info, which Elon and Co. will then be able to lean on as a marker of transparency and independent insight.
Even if it isn’t.
It’ll also be interesting to see exactly how X goes about releasing the code this time, because as of November last year, xAI, at least reportedly, is in control of X’s code base.
According to X staff, xAI now writes the algorithm code, with 20,000 GPUs at its Colossus data center in Memphis deciding what the app's 600 million users see every day.
So, if no human writes the code, then xAI could be taking a big risk in publishing, as even xAI staff won’t know what’s in it. Maybe it shows a higher level of bias, a leaning towards harmful topics, maybe it amplifies misinformation. Theoretically, not even the X team would know this, if it is actually relying on its AI tools to build the system.
And if its AI system is writing the code, that could also be why X users are complaining of recent impacts on their reach, because the xAI team had reportedly also been using Anthropic’s code development AI tools to assist in building its models, till Anthropic pulled the plug on them last week.
Maybe, that’s slowed development of its ranking systems, or changed its real-time ranking.
Either way, it seems like an odd time to be publishing what portends to be an overview of the X algorithm.
We’ll see what comes out later this week, and whether Elon and Co. keep the codebase updated as they change things over time. And if that does happen, it could provide valuable insight into how X ranks posts, and the impacts those calculations have on amplification.
