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twitter / the-algorithm

Source code for Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm
https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-source/2023/twitter-recommendation-algorithm
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
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Clarify the goal of ranking replies to political tweets #1756

Open TolstoyDotCom opened 1 year ago

TolstoyDotCom commented 1 year ago

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. I've posted examples of how the Twitter algorithm doesn't work. For instance, Twitter declared knife+blood emojis to be "HighQuality" and a "call me" emoji to be "AbusiveQuality". Someone replied to billionaire developer and L.A. mayoral candidate Rick Caruso with "I love you" and Twitter declared that "HighQuality". On the same thread, others calling Caruso on issues were censored (their tweets were hidden after the 'show more replies' link). I could spend the next month giving countless similar examples.

I want leaders of all kinds to be held accountable and I don't see Twitter helping with that. All I see is them promoting junk while suppressing quality.

But, that's just my opinion. I want Twitter to weigh in and describe the metrics they use to declare their algorithm a success.

Describe the solution you'd like Can Twitter - or their few supporters - give examples of the algorithm working as intended? I'm only talking about replies to political tweets, not follower suggestions etc.

In one Youtube account I listen to music in specific genres and their recommendation algorithm usually gets things right and suggests things I might not have found on my own.

I've never had the same response on Twitter when looking at the replies to political leaders. The Twitter ordering has never made any sense to me; I've never said "thanks for showing that near the top of the replies, Twitter". In most cases I have to keep scrolling and scrolling and then click 'show more replies' to see people acting like citizens and challenging leaders.

If we can nail down what Twitter management considers an effective ranking we might be able to improve their algorithm.

nobodyindustries commented 1 year ago

To me the criteria is very clear:

TolstoyDotCom commented 1 year ago

Actually, Musk hasn't changed much. He's let back on some users that triggered the Twitter snowflakes, he changed the Twitter logo, he obscured the "w" on their sign, etc. But, Twitter is still censoring millions of people each day.

In 2019, Twitter censored about half the replies to the president of Iran. In Feb 2023 they were censoring about half the replies to the head ayatollah of Iran. Plus ca change.

aloiscochard commented 1 year ago

Duplicate: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/issues/1760