What Happened
When asked what trust is all about, the billionaire responded that people want to know that the information they receive is truthful and that it’s representative of the full picture. They want to believe what they read and not feel that it’s overly biased or at least understand the nature of the bias, he added.“One of the key things to trust is transparency,” he said.
If there’s a social media company, people should be able to know what the algorithm is, so as to open source the algorithm, allowing them to look at it and critique it, the tech entrepreneur said. If there are any modifications done by people on that social media platform, these should be clear and again transparent, he added.
Why It’s Important
Musk is locked in a legal battle with Twitter, Inc. initiated by the latter after the billionaire walked away from a deal to take the social media platform private.Ahead of disclosing a passive stake built-in Twitter and his interest in buying the social media giant, Musk started off by asking his followers whether Twitter’s algorithm should be open source. The poll’s verdict was overwhelmingly in favor of an open-source algorithm.
The bone of contention between Twitter and Musk is the discrepancy in the bot account count disclosed by the company.
