Date:
September 02, 2024
X, formerly known as Twitter, is a social media platform for sharing short-form content. Its CEO, Elon Musk, has finally revealed the platform's algorithm secrets.
Social media platforms act as an automated system of discovering content that stirs viewership, engagement, and conversations. One such platform is X, with over 600 million global monthly active users. Elon Musk, the CEO of X, recently posted the working of X algorithm on his X handle, revealing the general secrets of mainstream social media platforms.
“The X algorithm assumes that if you interact with content, you want to see more of that content,” said Elon Musk in his post. The content preferences are captured through users’ stop-by on a post, likes, and shares. If a user shares any post with his friends and family, X considers that they like the content and want to see similar posts around the topic, theme, or visual-sound aesthetic.
The algorithm creates indicators or signals that get triggered strongly upon certain actions, like forwarding a post. “One of the strongest signals is if you forward X posts to friends, it assumes you like that content a lot because it takes effort to forward,” added Musk in his post. These signals together provide general user behavior data on certain posts and help them get discovered by more people, leading to their virality factor.
However, there are many limitations to the algorithm that result in users watching content that may actually hate, or associate a negative emotion with. “Unfortunately, if the actual reason you forwarded the content to friends was because you were outraged by it, we are currently not smart enough to realize that,” Musk explained about the X algorithm. Many platforms consider the dislike or downvote button as an indicator for removing such posts from users' feeds. X has no such actionable button to provide a manual indicator to the algorithm.
Artificial Intelligence is fighting hard to understand humans' intent to provide highly accurate results. The keyword to focus on in his statement is ‘we are currently not smart enough to realize that.’ Elon Musk, one of the largest investors in the AI space, is actively exploring ways to develop AI capabilities that capture human intentions.
While a breakthrough in this spectrum may help the platform segregate the likes and dislikes of users and help the algorithm smartly show what they want, it can also result in the spread of misinformation by finding the gullible audience clusters and propagating posts to their feeds.
One such allegation is actively linked to X from Brazil’s Top Court for spreading misinformation during last year's elections. The platform has firmly denied the court's direct orders to ban or block certain pages that promote coupe-related content or undermine democracy.
"There is growing evidence that fake judge Alexandre engaged in serious, repeated, and deliberate election interference in Brazil's last presidential election," Musk said in a post on X. As a result of this conflict, X has been banned across Brazil with immediate fines of $8100 on non-compliant individuals or organizations. Over 220 million X users are left stranded in the crossfire, with a forced need to switch to other social media apps.
