Twitter Showed Us Its Algorithm. What Does It Tell Us?

On March 31, Twitter open-sourced its recommendation algorithm. It turns out to be a standard engagement prediction algorithm of the kind most major platforms use; I explained how these algorithms work in a recent essay. The source code release makes for an interesting case study of social media transparency. Let’s talk about what the code does and doesn’t reveal, from the perspective of trying to understand information propagation and algorithmic amplification on social media...