Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) will publish its algorithm next week, in a move owner Elon Musk suggests might disappoint tech heads.
“Prepare to be disappointed at first when our algorithm is made open source next week,” he said in a tweet, responding to calls for the website’s code to be made public.
“It will improve rapidly,” Musk reassured, adding to claims he made last year that publishing the information was “the only way to […] solve both trust and efficacy,” which echoed former chief executive Jack Dorsey.
Publicising the social media’s code, which determines how and which posts users see, might allow people outside of the company to work on improvements and suggest changes to Twitter.
Musk had polled his followers in march last year over releasing the information, before he bought the company.
Twitter algorithm should be open source
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2022
Twitter has struggled with a series of outages lately, including an error last week that meant users could only see posts from Musk on their recommended ‘for you’ feed.
Users also reported being told they had reached their daily limit of 4,200 posts, a few days prior.
It comes after Musk has laid off at least half of Twitter’s workforce since his US$44bn October takeover, including employees from its sales and engineering departments last week, according to tech publication The Verge.
Whether the reduction in headcount has affected Twitter’s performance is unclear, although The Information claimed Musk had ordered staff to stop developing new products and fix ongoing issues instead in early February.