Twitter opens the source code of its recommendation algorithm, and reveals some surprises 🐦

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For a few years now, the display of tweets on the Twitter homepage is no longer chronological, but algorithmic. If you’ve always wondered why certain tweets appear on your Twitter feed, we now have some answers.

What does it mean to open the source code?🤔

Like any computer program, Twitter has what is called a source code. This is a set of instructions that make up a program. To make a parallel, if Twitter was a meal, the source code would be the set of ingredients used to prepare this meal. And to protect its recipe, so that no one can copy it, for example, Twitter’s source code is known only by the engineers who work on it.

Elon Musk promised it, and on March 31, Twitter made part of its code public, via the GitHub platform, well known in the world of developers. By doing so, Twitter gives anyone the opportunity to look into this code to understand how the platform works. If all the source code of Twitter is not shared, it is an important part that affects all users on a daily basis: the recommendation algorithm.

How does the Twitter recommendation algorithm work ? 🧐

1. It assigns a numerical score to each user based on the number and quality of interactions they have with other users – the higher the score, the more influential the user is on Twitter.
2. It calculates a user’s reputation score based on factors such as account age, number of followers and device usage.
3. It adjusts the user’s score based on his follower-to-follower ratio.
4. The final score, on a scale of 0 to 100, is the « Tweepcred » score, which represents the user’s reputation on Twitter.
5. This score is used to determine which users are recommended to follow or whose content should be highlighted.

In addition to this general operation, there are other elements.

Creating engaging content is more important than likes and retweets

Another algorithm takes care of ranking the relevance of your tweet based on interactions. For example,

• A user who clicks on your tweet and stays there for more than 2 minutes has 22 times more weight than a user who just likes your tweet.
• If they click on your profile through your tweet and like or reply to a tweet, 24x more than a like.
• If he replies to your tweet, 54x more than a like.
• If they reply to your tweet and you reply to their reply, 150x more than a like.
• If they report your tweet, -738x the effect of a like and you’re pretty much screwed.

Getting blocked/muted/reported is very bad.

Following on from the previous point, bad feedback reduces your reputation score: being blocked, muted, reported for abuse, reported for spam. When someone unsubscribes it is also bad, but not as bad as the other points above.

Source : Steven Tey on Twitter

The government can interfere with the algorithm

If you still had doubts, well, you should know that the government can intervene in the recommendation of content on Twitter. And during elections, the algorithm can :

• Recommend candidate accounts to follow
• Delete information that it deems false.

Interestingly, Twitter has identified 4 different groups of users to track and compare how often their tweets are impressed on users: powerful users, Democratic users, Republican users and Elon Musk. And yes, the owner of Twitter gets special treatment on his platform.

Source : Steven Tey on Twitter

The algorithm likes images and videos

With the current mode, tweets with images and videos receive a x2 boost. But this mode should evolve as Twitter plans to rebuild it.

Source : Steven Tey sur Twitter

The better your reputation on Twitter, the better your visibility👨🏾‍🎤

The ranking algorithm takes into account more of your tweets if your reputation score is high. If your Tweepcred is less than 65, the algorithm only takes into account a maximum of 3 tweets. If your Tweepcred is higher than 65, there is no limit to the number of tweets taken into account. So you can post as many tweets as you want, including threads. However, make sure your tweets are of high quality because other users may cut them off, block them or report them as spam, which can hurt your reputation score.

You should also know that Twitter Blue users are more highlighted than others by the algorithm. To be visible, you will have to pay.

Source : Steven Tey sur Twitter

Finally, on Twitter, as on most social media platforms, tweets lose their relevance over time and are therefore shown less often to other users. Indeed, tweets have a half-life of 360 minutes, which means that their relativity score decreases by half every 6 hours.

If you’re on Twitter and you want your tweets to be as recommended as possible, you know what you have to do.

Sources : Twitter, Steven Tey