Elon Musk has accused Twitter of "manipulating" users with its algorithm and even suggested a way to fix the problem. The drama over Musk's Twitter acquisition keeps getting weirder by the day, even as social media users, free-speech advocates and politicians debate over whether Musk's acquisition will be a boon or bane for the micro-blogging platform. Following a $44 billion offer a few weeks ago to buy Twitter, Musk last week announced that he's putting the acquisition on hold, pending details about the total number of spam accounts on the platform.
According to Musk, he will not move forward with the deal until he can verify Twitter's claims that not more than 5 percent of the total number of accounts on the platform are spam bots. Musk also said that the plan to calculate the number of fake accounts is to take a random sample of 100 followers on Twitter and check the total number of fake accounts within that group to deduce the total number of spam accounts. However, critics have already slammed the methodology, saying that a sample number of 100 is not nearly enough to identify the actual number of fake accounts.
In a series of Tweets over the weekend, Elon Musk claimed that Twitter users are being manipulated by the company's algorithm that decides what they can see on their default feed. He also said that it is important to fix the feed and shared how users can, in a few simple taps, change the default algorithmic home feed to a reverse chronological one to get all the latest Tweets from the accounts they follow. As Musk points out, this can be done by tapping on the 'Home' button at the bottom left corner of the Twitter screen, then on the stars at the upper-right corner, and finally on 'Switch to latest Tweets.' Musk also encouraged users to switch back and forth between the two feeds to check out the difference for themselves.
A Twitter 'Fix' Many Should Already Know
Musk is correct about the algorithmic feed amplifying users' own viewpoints, as it is based on the content that users most often engage with, including Tweets that they like, retweet, reply to, search for, and so on. However, the method to switch between the two is not exactly a secret and a large number of ardent Twitter users will already know it well. For that don't, however, it is useful to be aware of how to switch the way the feed is generated.
Musk later clarified that he was not suggesting any malice in the algorithm, and was instead worried that the site was trying to guess what users might want to read. Further explaining that the algorithm was inadvertently manipulating or amplifying users' viewpoints without them even realizing what was happening. In spite of the extra clarification, the damage was done, and Twitter's founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey seemingly took offense to the insinuation that Twitter was manipulating users. Replying to Elon Musk's Tweet, Dorsey insisted that the algorithmic feed was simply designed for people who don’t obsessively check Twitter. In another Tweet, Dorsey admitted that Twitter's algorithm can have "unintended consequences," but maintained that it wasn’t designed to manipulate anyone.
Source: Elon Musk/Twitter, Jack Dorsey/Twitter