Since the purchase of 9.2% of the shares, Elon Musk has made it clear he wants to make changes to Twitter. Tesla’s CEO has proposed a variety of settings on the social network that range from a button to editing tweets, authenticating all users, or opening an algorithm. Alex Retter, former CTO of Twitter, believes that many of these ideas make sense if implemented well.
Retter was interviewed by journalist Alex Kantrowitz on the Big Technology podcast, where he gave his opinion on the topic. Former Twitter CTO is optimistic about Elon Musk’s proposals. While most of them are doable, the only change he doubts is the openness of the algorithm.
One of Elon Musk’s first proposals was to implement button to edit tweets, which was adopted by the company a few days later. While the edit button can be used to harass or scam, Alex Retter shown in favor of your arrival. “I don’t think it will change any of the core things that are upsetting everyone,” he said.
The ex-engineer is also convinced that authentication of all people is a feasible and recommended idea. Elon Musk has mentioned his intention to vet users on the platform, which will serve to combat the platform’s major issues. “Anonymity encourages the worst parts of speech on the Internet,” Retter said. Email or SMS confirmation will help reduce harassment.
Elon Musk Has Good Ideas, But Implementing Twitter Changes Will Be Tough
Another way to improve the platform fight spam. This is an area that Twitter has not paid much attention to, probably because checking accounts would have lost a significant portion of its user base. This does not interest Elon Musk, who declared war on spambots and said he would beat them (or die trying).
In this regard, Retter believes that although it’s a good idea, it’s not so easy to implement. To get rid of bots it is necessary to develop a classifier which can analyze their characteristics and prohibit them. The problem is that the classifier not 100% accurate and may remove real user accounts during the cleaning process. Elon Musk and company will have to work on a solution that will get rid of bots without affecting third parties.
Two of the most difficult moments for the ex-Director of Twitter are related to freedom of expression and openness of the algorithm. The first is the flag of Elon Musk in his bid to acquire Twitter. The self-described “free speech absolutist” mogul distrusts current Twitter moderation and ridicules its main culprit.
According to Retter, Elon Musk’s vision presents some technical challenges and he doesn’t think there will be an answer that will make everyone happy. The first step will be relax the current moderation policy and analyze how events unfold. With verification system and ban bots, Hate speech and harassment is likely to decrease so the impact will be less if Elon changes the rules.
Releasing the Twitter algorithm code is not as easy as it seems
Opening the code of the algorithm to everyone is something else. Alex Retter claims that algorithms analyze billions of examples of content and try to predict how we will react to tweets and ads. According to a former employee, the algorithms themselves say little. Twitter uses machine learning to drive the decisions of its users and understand those patterns. it’s not as easy as downloading them from a GitHub repository.
Elon Musk’s idea is that we could all contribute to improving the Twitter algorithm if we had access to it. The problem is that there is no single algorithm and shared it Steve Teixeira, VP of Products.
When people say that Twitter should “open source the algorithm”, what are they hoping to accomplish by doing so? And what is the algorithm? Main feed? Chronological feed? Advertising? Trends? Opening? Other?
Alex Retter believes that it may be feasible and feasible to open source these algorithms, but only will help in specific cases, for example, in the fight against conspiracy theorists.
Source: Hiper Textual
