Revealing the source code of Twitter’s recommendation algorithms will not solve the social networking problem. This has been pointed out by a number of experts in data privacy and Internet security, writes Wired.

According to MIT professor and computer scientist David Karger, in the age of machine learning it’s data, not algorithms, that matter. He believes Elon Musk can improve Twitter by making the platform more open so others can use it in new ways.

“It’s not the algorithms that make Twitter important. These are the people tweeting,” Karger said.

Alex Engler of the Brookings Institution, who studies the impact of AI on society, takes a similar view. According to him, the key to the openness of the platform may be an understanding of the decision-making processes that the algorithms train.

“The code is fine. The data is ok. The code and data combined in the model may be better,” said the expert.

An anonymous employee of the company said that Twitter’s machine learning models are just the tip of the iceberg. The whole system reacts intricately to the behavior of visitors in real time. If users are particularly interested in a particular news, related tweets will appear more frequently.

“Twitter is a socio-technical system. It responds to human behavior,” the source stressed.

Another employee said that the platform does not have a single algorithm for promoting content in the main feed. Such decisions are the result of many different models interacting with each other based on user actions. The results are also tailored to each platform visitor.

“There is no ‘base algorithm’ for Twitter,” said a source from the Twitter tech team.

However, experts welcomed Musk’s efforts to make the company’s algorithms transparent and understandable for users and researchers.

According to Derek Roots, an associate professor at McGill University in Canada, social platforms are too difficult for students to learn. He added that transparency can reveal the details of algorithms and increase the pressure on other social networks.

“This could be a really interesting experiment, long overdue,” Roots said.

Previously, the Twitter Board of Directors accepted Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company for $ 44 billion. First of all, the businessman aims to increase the transparency of the social network, open the source code of the recommendation algorithms and ensure the principle of freedom. speech for all users.

Recall that in April the European Union agreed on the Digital Services Act, which regulates recommendation algorithms and targeted advertising.

In February, a group of US senators introduced a similar bill to Congress.

In January, China approved the rules for editing recommendation algorithms.