Elon Musk announced on Twitter that the majority of Twitter's recommendation algorithms will become open source that day, with the remainder to be released soon. Musk explained that the "acid test" would be whether independent third parties could accurately predict what content would be shown to users. Although Musk acknowledged that releasing the code would likely reveal numerous embarrassing issues, he pledged to address them promptly.
Twitter has published a blog post announcing that it has uploaded its source code to two repositories on GitHub. The code released includes numerous aspects of Twitter, such as the recommendation algorithm that determines which tweets appear in users' timelines. However, it does not contain the code behind Twitter's ad recommendations. Elon Musk believes that transparency in code will foster greater trust among users and could even result in enhancements to the platform.
The decision to release the source code comes on the heels of a recent leak of portions of Twitter's source code on GitHub, which the company promptly took down upon its request.