Thread by @v_vashishta

Open-sourcing Twitter’s algorithm isn’t what most people think it is. I don’t think even Elon Musk or most people at Twitter really understand where this process goes.
1/10
#DataScience #MachineLearning #Twitter

The code is not very insightful. The model itself is too complex for people to understand and interact with. So, what does open-sourcing the algorithm look like?
2/10
#DataScience #MachineLearning #Twitter

It’s the ability to click on a Tweet in your timeline and get a detailed explanation of why it was served to you. There are levels of model explainability.
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#DataScience #MachineLearning #Twitter

The most straightforward explanations revolve around high-level user behaviors. I frequently engage with @KenJee_DS and @DataScienceHarp’s content, so I get served tweets they retweet and like.
4/10
#DataScience #MachineLearning #Twitter

I follow the topics ‘data science’ and ‘sneakers,’ so I get served a lot of content from those topics. Diving deeper is much more difficult. Out of all the sneakers-related posts, why was I served this one?
5/10
#DataScience #MachineLearning #Twitter

I’ve never engaged with that specific account, and I don’t follow it closely, so why did the recommender algorithm serve me that tweet? Diving deeper is much more difficult.
6/10
#DataScience #MachineLearning #Twitter

Out of all the sneakers-related posts, why was I served this one?

Does the recommender love this tweet because it was popular, or is this tweet popular because the recommender loved it? Socrates asked, ‘Whose bias do ya’ll seek?’
7/10
#DataScience #MachineLearning #Twitter

This will be a tougher conversation regarding political content and topics far more sensitive than sneakers and data science. I hope Elon and Twitter take the hard road instead of a superficial solution.
8/10
#DataScience #MachineLearning #Twitter

Euthyphro’s Dilemma is one of our field’s biggest challenges. When models become actors in human systems, they change the governing dynamics.
9/10
#DataScience #MachineLearning #Twitter

We must create a framework of acceptable influences, or people will never trust models enough to adopt them for high-value use cases.
10/10
#DataScience #MachineLearning #Twitter