Musk posts on how to ‘fix’ Twitter feed; Dorsey responds
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has once again taken to Twitter to criticize the platform itself. In a tweet posted earlier today, Musk gave tips to ‘fix’ users’ Twitter feed asking them to change their feed to a reverse chronological order by selecting the “Latest Tweets” option on their home screen. Musk also said that users are “manipulated by the algorithm” in ways they do not recognize.
Very important to fix your Twitter feed:
1. Tap the home button.
2. Tap stars on the upper right of the screen.
3. Select “Latest tweets”.You are being manipulated by the algorithm in ways you don’t understand.
Easy to switch back & forth to see the difference.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022
Jack Dorsey, the founder of the platform, responded to this tweet by defending the algorithm, saying that it was just designed to save people time while they were away from the app. A few hours later, Musk clarified his initial tweet saying he was not suggesting any malice in the algorithm.
It was designed to simply save you time while you’re away from the app for a while.
The pull to refresh goes back to the reverse chron as well.
– jack⚡️ (@jack) May 14, 2022
I’m not suggesting malice in the algorithm, but rather that it’s trying to guess what you might want to read and, in doing so, inadvertently manipulate / amplify your viewpoints without realizing this is happening.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 15, 2022
This comes just days after Musk announced that his deal to take over Twitter was “temporarily holding on” while he waited for more details about the proportion of spam or fake accounts on the platform.
Twitter deal temporarily withholding details supporting calculation that spam / fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps: //t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
“Any sensible random sampling process is fine. If many people independently get similar results for% of fake / spam / duplicate accounts, that would be telling.I picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake / spam / duplicate, "he added as a reply to the tweet announcing the status of the acquisition.
According to Musk, he later received a call from a Twitter lawyer who told him that he had violated an NDA by revealing the fact that Twitter’s bot check sample size is 100.
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