Was it all a heavily foreshadowed prank? On April 1, I opened Twitter and was dismayed to learn that I still have a blue check. Initially worried that people might think I had paid to retain my “verification” mark—as CEO Elon Musk had demanded—I was somewhat relieved to learn that it wasn’t just me; only a handful of accounts have lost their ticks.
That handful notably includes the main New York Times account, which was de-checked after someone told Musk that the newspaper refused to pay up—Musk claimed the Times was being “incredible hypocritical” because it enforces a paywall, which would be a more coherent argument if the Gray Lady were trying to get readers to pay to write her articles.
This may seem like yet another example of Musk failing to make good on a promise, but it’s not necessarily that. Twitter was clear that it would only begin removing “legacy verified check marks” on Saturday, which may have something to do with the fact—reported by the Washington Post a few days ago—that the process is largely manual and impossible to execute in bulk.
However, if Twitter is following through, it’s doing so in a typically chaotic fashion. Users clicking on blue checks to see what they mean are now told that the badge could mean the user is a legacy check-holder, or that they’ve paid for Twitter Blue—as for which, that’s anyone’s guess. Because Twitter Blue doesn’t involve any real identity verification and the legacy system did, this is a gift for impersonators who can shell out Musk’s $8 safe in the knowledge that even mildly skeptical people might still think they’re the real deal.
Speaking of Musk’s promises, on Friday, Twitter open-sourced much of its recommendation algorithm.
Some have noted that what was released was incomplete. A former Twitter exec told my colleague Kylie Robison that the release was “dishonest” because Twitter recommends tweets based on a user’s data as well as the code it has now made public, so “in order to open-source the algorithm you need to open-source the training set, which is impossible for Twitter to do.” Affirm product manager Aakash Gupta, who authored a viral thread analyzing the code, wrote that a former Twitter engineer told him the company published only around a fifth of the algorithm.
However, as made clear by Gupta and others, we can divine some genuinely interesting information from the release (apart from the fact that Twitter collects metrics segmenting users into the categories of Democrat, Republican, “power user,” and “Elon,” who professed surprise at the existence of that final nano-category). Likes provide a bigger boost than retweets do and way more than replies. Adding links actually hinders the quest for a boost, unless the user gets a lot of engagement. Mutes and unfollows really hurt a user’s engagement score. Posts get heavily penalized for misspellings or made-up words.
This, as they say, is news you can use. As I have previously written, the tech industry will be watching closely to see if Twitter’s partial open-sourcing leads to any kind of abuse by spammers or other ne’er-do-wells. If not, Musk’s transparency move might prove influential.
Separately, congratulations to Meta’s top lobbyist in Brussels, Aura Salla, who is off to become a politician after winning a seat in Finland’s elections over the weekend. That’s not the usual direction of travel, so let’s call this a Reverse Clegg.
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David Meyer
Data Sheet’s daily news section was written and curated by Andrea Guzman.
