Twitter made public some parts of the computer code that determines how the social media site recommends content on Friday.
The public availability of its source code gives users and programmers access to its inner workings as well as the ability to suggest changes to the algorithm.
The code was uploaded to the code-sharing platform Github in two repositories, according to the company.
They contain the source code for many parts of Twitter, including the recommendations algorithm, which determines which tweets appear on users’ timelines.
The repositories do not contain the code that powers Twitter’s ad recommendations, according to a blog post by the company.
The move is at the request of its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, who has stated that code transparency will increase user trust.
Third parties should be able to analyse the open-source code and “determine, with reasonable accuracy, what will probably be shown to users,” Musk tweeted on Friday.
Twitter stated that it did not include code that would jeopardise user safety or privacy, as well as details that would jeopardise efforts to prevent child sexual abuse content on the platform.
The news also comes after parts of Twitter’s source code were leaked on Github, which removed the code at Twitter’s request last week.
According to a legal filing, Twitter has asked the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to order Github to produce “all identifying information” associated with the Github account that posted the leaked code.
