Elon Musk responded to the criticism of the social media platform's manipulative algorithm Saturday after a controversial new update stoked backlash worldwide, particularly in Türkiye as the algorithm promoted posts by terrorist sympathizers ahead of Türkiye's presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14. Musk said that they hoped to earn people's trust.
Musk stated that Twitter would "open source all code used to recommend tweets on March 31."
The Twitter CEO claimed that "our 'algorithm' is overly complex & not fully understood internally. People will discover many silly things, but we'll patch issues as soon as they're found!"
The insistently increasing promotion of content from opposition supporters and terrorist sympathizers on the social media platform stoked concern over electoral intervention in Türkiye ahead of the May 14 vote.
An update in Twitter's algorithm increasing the visibility of criticism of the government based on defamation campaigns by opposition supporters and terrorist groups' sympathizers prompted manipulation concerns. Twitter's newly updated algorithm has promoted posts by terrorist sympathizers, a monthlong study by the Turkish newspaper Sabah analyzing suggested tweets found.
The social media platform’s algorithm, which now divides the timelines into "For you" and "Following" sections, deliberately conceals apolitical content or content created by supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Instead, it puts tweets on users' timelines from individual and bot accounts of supporters of the PKK terrorist organization and the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ).
"We're developing a simplified approach to serve more compelling tweets, but it's still a work in progress. That’ll also be open source," Musk said.
"Providing code transparency will be incredibly embarrassing at first, but it should lead to rapid improvement in recommendation quality. Most importantly, we hope to earn your trust."
The controversial incident occurs less than two months before the much-anticipated vote and raises questions about purposeful manipulation. It also considers the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where the consulting firm worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign in the United States and gained access to the personal information of millions of Facebook accounts for voter profiling and targeting. SCL Elexion, the parent group of Cambridge Analytica, has opened offices in Türkiye as well.
The social media platform's recently added "For You" section insistently shows unfiltered content indiscriminate of accuracy or whether it's by a bot or a real account, thus exposing a user to opinions and information they are not interested in or agree with, according to multiple experts.
Musk had called out Twitter's newsfeed algorithms as "manipulative" back in May 2022, which prompted founder Jack Dorsey to respond and disagree with the claim.
Musk said back then that he wanted the Twitter algorithm to be an open source as users were being "manipulated" by the site's newsfeed algorithm. "You are being manipulated by the algorithm in ways you don't realize," Musk had said.
Dorsey responded by disagreeing with Musk, saying the function was a means of updating followers on trending news and was easily changed.
Twitter last month was criticized by the European Commission for its alleged shortcoming in tackling disinformation. European Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova has singled out Twitter for failure to comply with the EU's code of practice on disinformation.
Like other social media companies, Twitter must report on data on how much advertising revenue the companies had earned from disinformation actors, the number or value of political advertisements accepted or rejected, and detected instances of manipulative behaviors.
The microblogging site is among the breeding grounds for disinformation and manipulation in Türkiye. British academic Marc Owen Jones said on his Twitter account Türkiye faced a possible influence operation following the 2021 forest fires in the country’s south, pointing out the "#HelpTurkey" hashtag created on Twitter in the wake of wildfires.
Many social media users took to Twitter to express their sorrow and to call for global help for Türkiye, also prompting a nationalistic reaction over the call's perceived implication that the country is portrayed as unable to fight the blazes.
Election manipulation has been under the spotlight recently with the proliferation of social media platforms.
An Israeli company tried to influence over 30 elections in the world for clients through sabotage, hacking and spreading misinformation, an undercover media probe revealed last month. It added to a growing body of evidence that shadowy private firms worldwide are profiting from invasive hacking tools and the power of social media platforms to manipulate public opinion.
The firm was dubbed "Team Jorge" by investigating journalists who posed as potential clients to gather information on its methods and capabilities. Its boss, Tal Hanan, is a former Israeli special forces operative who boasted of being able to control supposedly secure Telegram accounts and thousands of fake social media profiles, as well as planting news stories, the reports say.
The investigation was carried out by a consortium of journalists from 30 outlets, including The Guardian in Britain, Le Monde in France, Der Spiegel in Germany, and El Pais in Spain, under the direction of the France-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories.
"The methods and techniques described by Team Jorge raise new challenges for big tech platforms," The Guardian wrote. "Evidence of a global private market in disinformation aimed at elections will also ring alarm bells for democracies worldwide."
