Dan LuuMar 31, 2023

The new stuff in the Twitter algorithm is wild.

"author_is_elon", "author_is_republican", "author_is_democrat", etc., are explicit terms that are special cased.

https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/7f90d0ca342b928b479b512ec51ac2c3821f5922/home-mixer/server/src/main/scala/com/twitter/home_mixer/functional_component/decorator/HomeTweetTypePredicates.scala

the-algorithm/home-mixer/server/src/main/scala/com/twitter/home_mixer/functional_component/decorator/HomeTweetTypePredicates.scala at 7f90d0ca342b928b479b512ec51ac2c3821f5922 · twitter/the-algorithm

Source code for Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm - twitter/the-algorithm

GitHub
Show threadDan LuuMar 31, 2023
I'm a bit surprised at how many "well, actually, these are just metrics" replies I'm getting that seem to find the spirit of this comment plausible after (just for example), Elon asked why his engagement was dropping and then fired Twitter's most senior remaining engineer for telling him it's not a bug, which was followed by people seeing a lot more Elon in their feed and people also report seeing way more Republican stuff in their feed.
Show threadjtpotato

@danluu Still metrics - though you aren't wrong, it's just that they design the algorithm to not "negatively impact" these groups rather than outright boost Elon.

(probably not good in any case however)

Mar 31, 2023 at 9:19pmWeb