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Only used for metrics, apparently. [0] /** * These author ID lists are used purely for metrics collection. We track how often we are * serving Tweets f

Only used for metrics, apparently. [0] /** * These author ID lists are used purely for metrics collection. We track how often we are * serving Tweets from these authors and how often their tweets are being impressed by users. * This helps us validate in our A/B experimentation platform that we do not ship changes * that negatively impacts one group over others. */ [0]: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/7f90d0ca342b928b479b512ec51ac2c3821f5922/home-mixer/server/src/main/scala/com/twitter/home_mixer/functional_component/feature_hydrator/RequestQueryFeatureHydrator.scala#L87 https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/blob/7f90d0ca342b92...

minimaxir 4y ago
The original code is a part of the home-mixer service, which is the "Main service used to construct and serve the Home Timeline." I suspect the flag corresponds to weights not present in the repo.
roughly 4y ago
I expect they're tracking the red team/blue team metrics because of the political shitstorm that's been the GOP's assertions they're being silenced by The Algorithm.
- panarky 4y ago
  The fallacy of false equivalence systematized in code. Now one side can spew as much disinfo and incitement to violence as it likes, and any algorithm change that prevents this shit from getting amplified will be rejected as bias. BSaaS = Both Sides as a Service
  - eldritch_4ier 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - willdr 4y ago
      What are you talking about? Do you remember January 6?
      - panarky 4y ago
        Everybody remembers January 6 except those who want to pretend it didn't happen. How many remember the floods of Twitter incitement to hit the gas in their F-150 trucks to run over protesters, and then how many people actually perpetrated vehicle attacks?
      - JackAndJack 4y ago
        [flagged]
      - eldritch_4ier 4y ago
        [flagged]
    - zeven7 4y ago
      I clicked downvote before reading the whole comment. At first I thought you were talking about the red team when you started with "mass riots and violence..." Then I read the rest of your comment and still felt just as good about my downvote. This isn't a constructive comment no matter what "side" you're on.
      - luxuryballs 4y ago
        “Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed--and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment-- the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution- -not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants"--but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.” JFK
  - KarlKemp 4y ago
    Well, technically they are looking for relative changes, not equal total exposures.
  - electrondood 4y ago
    Not sure why you got downvoted, you're absolutely correct.
  - slg 4y ago
    This shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone. It was reported years ago that Twitter was unable to cut down on hate speech because the automated systems they developed triggered too many [debatably false] positives on Republican politicians and that was bad for the company's reputation. If Twitter wanted to prevent future code changes from impacting that approach, there needed to be something like this in the code or tests.
    - lenkite 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - slg 4y ago
        I don't know what specific documents you think did that, but "comprehensively" is absolutely an awful way to describe the Twitter Files. They were anything but "comprehensive". In actuality, they were an excellent example of how easy it is to lie using partial truths. For example, highlighting all the times Twitter took moderation recommendations from a Democratic campaign looks a lot worse if you hide any time they took moderation from Republican campaigns. A simple look at the specific journalists that were given access to Twitter documents and the strings attached to that access reveals that the Twitter Files were not about transparency. They were an ideological play and nothing more. If Musk wanted true transparency, he would have given wider access to more documents or just released them all like Jack Dorsey requested.
        lenkite 4y ago
        Could you please point out the list of moderation recommendations from Republican campaigns that were actually accepted and carried out? The only ones that were revealed so far were of the following types: 1. requests to un-ban or un-suspend right-wing personas 2. removal of explicit death threats. 3. Anything against the vaccine - even actual, scientific data. From the twitter files, the Twitter team that was wholly left-leaning spent significant time and debate looking for the mildest of excuses to ban right-wing politicians, building black lists for them and even gloating happily as they managed to kick them off. Not much doubt about that - actually no one has even denied that. There were several hearings also in the house judiciary where they even confirmed the same. (Interestingly, there was pressure applied on Matt Taibbi to either "shut up" or relinquish all his sources to law enforcement. Also, as a form of indirect pressure to rattle him, US tax agents visited his house the VERY DAY he would testify before US Congress stating that his tax returns had been rejected due to identity theft concerns - despite him having the electronic receipt which showed it being accepted.)
  - lenkite 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dudeinjapan 4y ago
    Yeah but despite all that they should still give leftists a platform to tweet.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    I don't see an unbiased way to tell which "side" releases more disinformation and incitement to violence. Even deciding what counts as disinformation is hard (e.g. does it have to be literally false or just cause false beliefs in the reader?).
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      One way to tell would be to look at which side is incited to violence more often. It turns out, according to the FBI (which is a conservative organization historically and exclusively run by conservatives), right wing extremism and violence is in fact the biggest domestic terror threat in the US, and it's currently growing [1]. FBI Director Wray gave this testimony after a right wing domestic terror attack was carried out that aimed to topple the US government. Not much has changed since then [2]. Since the former President's indictment the other day, the right-wing violent rhetoric has also ratcheted up a notch, so we can expect right-wing violence to follow. Notably, we can confidently say this doesn't happen on the left, as when Hillary lost they did not launch an assault against the Capitol as the right did. Instead, they knit pink hats and had a march. (PS before anyone whattabouts the George Floyd protests, the FBI doesn't see them the same way [3]) https://apnews.com/article/fbi-chris-wray-testify-capitol-riot-9a5539af34b15338bb5c4923907eeb67 https://apnews.com/article/fbi-chris-wray-testify-capitol-ri... https://news.yahoo.com/right-wing-extremists-responsible-for-majority-of-deadly-terrorist-attacks-181352019.html https://news.yahoo.com/right-wing-extremists-responsible-for... https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrorism-strategic-report-2022.pdf/view https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrori...
      - yeahsure22 4y ago
        [dead]
mochomocha 4y ago
... Metrics tracked in AB test. So even if it's not explicitly encoded in the algo (or implicitly through some of the features plugged in), they'll pick the winning cell as long as it doesn't hurt Elon's metrics (I'm just parroting the comment you quoted). It doesn't have to be in the algorithm for the systems to be tweaked to please Elon vanity metrics. [I've been running lots of ML AB tests over the years, some in organizations of similar size & complexity as Twitter]
- btown 4y ago
  It’s just a two-pass EM (Elon Maximization) algorithm!
- threeseed 4y ago
  That lines up with reporting from Casey Newton a few days ago where a handful of VIPs e.g. Musk, LeBron James, AOC were being used as weather vanes to understand what the algorithm was doing. It definitely isn't just metrics. Any algorithm change that negatively affected Musk was clearly not going live.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - db48x 4y ago
    Do you think the code looked like that prior to Elon's purchase? I suspect that there was another name there before. Separately, which of these groups do you think that they use as a control?
    - jefftk 4y ago
      > which of these groups do you think that they use as a control? When you run an A/B test you randomly divide your users into groups, one (treatment) getting the new behavior and one (control) getting the current production behavior. So your question doesn't make much sense?
      - 4y ago
sva_ 4y ago
Ahh, the group of Elons. I was wondering why I see so many tweets by him, and what his "Group's" impression quote is. This is actually pretty hilarious.
- nailer 4y ago
  That’s not how it works. See the parent.
  - sva_ 4y ago
    They said that they use it for metrics, so clearly there must be an "elon impression" metric.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      I imagine it's the largest metric in a mission control style room it starts dropping, klaxons start blaring, the room drops to red only lighting, engineers on the floor start pulling out their hair knowing the shitstorm that's coming
    - nailer 4y ago
      Yes, it’s not making anyone see any extra Elon tweets as your comment alleged.
      - jonny_eh 4y ago
        It means they won't ship features that hurt Elon's reach. So in a sense, it is biasing code changes in favour of Elon.
        nailer 4y ago
        Why does it mean that?
- wardedVibe 4y ago
  Thankfully they haven't added a "no mute Elon" feature. Yet.
andy_ppp 4y ago
But who chooses the users to be metrics…
infogulch 4y ago
So many unnecessarily cynical takes here. Let's say you were in charge of a large legacy system that some segment of customers complain about it not working for them as well as other segments. How would you know whether their complaints are valid unless you measured it? You have to know first. So measure it.
- xmprt 4y ago
  I understand the value of measurements but how does measuring tweets from an individual user help?
  - dorkwood 4y ago
    If engagement on the tweets of that user goes down after a change has been implemented, you can roll back the change to prevent that user from being negatively impacted.
    - nrb 4y ago
      What if engagements around that user naturally declined, perhaps due to that user going off the deep end. Wouldn’t this just serve to bias the algorithm toward propping up the exposure of that user? Do they even care about the control so long as that user’s engagement is up and to the right?
      - TigeriusKirk 4y ago
        He's very likely the user on the platform with the most engagement, and probably by a long distance. From that viewpoint, it does make some sense to use his account as measurement point.
      - v0idzer0 4y ago
        Come on think this through. It’s trivial to tell the difference between a gradual and natural decline and a drastic decline immediately after rolling out a change. Especially when the change is rolled out region by region and only exists in regions running the update. You have to be able to measure the effect of changes and the most popular accounts are the obvious low hanging fruit for doing that.
hn2017 4y ago
Per original source, The code that was released today doesn't show the parts that actually alter the scores of Elon and other users. The part of the code referenced below just tracks Elon stats (from what I know). Employees removed most PII before the code was released.
jasonhansel 4y ago
Interesting which "groups" they care about (e.g. mainstream political parties).
jalapenos 4y ago
Correct. It's a binary metric. Did the number go up, yes/no (kept job / not).

minimaxir 4y ago

The original code is a part of the home-mixer service, which is the "Main service used to construct and serve the Home Timeline." I suspect the flag corresponds to weights not present in the repo.

roughly 4y ago

I expect they're tracking the red team/blue team metrics because of the political shitstorm that's been the GOP's assertions they're being silenced by The Algorithm.

panarky 4y ago
The fallacy of false equivalence systematized in code. Now one side can spew as much disinfo and incitement to violence as it likes, and any algorithm change that prevents this shit from getting amplified will be rejected as bias. BSaaS = Both Sides as a Service
- eldritch_4ier 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - willdr 4y ago
    What are you talking about? Do you remember January 6?
    - panarky 4y ago
      Everybody remembers January 6 except those who want to pretend it didn't happen. How many remember the floods of Twitter incitement to hit the gas in their F-150 trucks to run over protesters, and then how many people actually perpetrated vehicle attacks?
    - JackAndJack 4y ago
      [flagged]
    - eldritch_4ier 4y ago
      [flagged]
  - zeven7 4y ago
    I clicked downvote before reading the whole comment. At first I thought you were talking about the red team when you started with "mass riots and violence..." Then I read the rest of your comment and still felt just as good about my downvote. This isn't a constructive comment no matter what "side" you're on.
    - luxuryballs 4y ago
      “Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed--and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment-- the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution- -not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants"--but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.” JFK
- KarlKemp 4y ago
  Well, technically they are looking for relative changes, not equal total exposures.
- electrondood 4y ago
  Not sure why you got downvoted, you're absolutely correct.
- slg 4y ago
  This shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone. It was reported years ago that Twitter was unable to cut down on hate speech because the automated systems they developed triggered too many [debatably false] positives on Republican politicians and that was bad for the company's reputation. If Twitter wanted to prevent future code changes from impacting that approach, there needed to be something like this in the code or tests.
  - lenkite 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - slg 4y ago
      I don't know what specific documents you think did that, but "comprehensively" is absolutely an awful way to describe the Twitter Files. They were anything but "comprehensive". In actuality, they were an excellent example of how easy it is to lie using partial truths. For example, highlighting all the times Twitter took moderation recommendations from a Democratic campaign looks a lot worse if you hide any time they took moderation from Republican campaigns. A simple look at the specific journalists that were given access to Twitter documents and the strings attached to that access reveals that the Twitter Files were not about transparency. They were an ideological play and nothing more. If Musk wanted true transparency, he would have given wider access to more documents or just released them all like Jack Dorsey requested.
      - lenkite 4y ago
        Could you please point out the list of moderation recommendations from Republican campaigns that were actually accepted and carried out? The only ones that were revealed so far were of the following types: 1. requests to un-ban or un-suspend right-wing personas 2. removal of explicit death threats. 3. Anything against the vaccine - even actual, scientific data. From the twitter files, the Twitter team that was wholly left-leaning spent significant time and debate looking for the mildest of excuses to ban right-wing politicians, building black lists for them and even gloating happily as they managed to kick them off. Not much doubt about that - actually no one has even denied that. There were several hearings also in the house judiciary where they even confirmed the same. (Interestingly, there was pressure applied on Matt Taibbi to either "shut up" or relinquish all his sources to law enforcement. Also, as a form of indirect pressure to rattle him, US tax agents visited his house the VERY DAY he would testify before US Congress stating that his tax returns had been rejected due to identity theft concerns - despite him having the electronic receipt which showed it being accepted.)
- lenkite 4y ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dudeinjapan 4y ago
  Yeah but despite all that they should still give leftists a platform to tweet.
- concordDance 4y ago
  I don't see an unbiased way to tell which "side" releases more disinformation and incitement to violence. Even deciding what counts as disinformation is hard (e.g. does it have to be literally false or just cause false beliefs in the reader?).
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    One way to tell would be to look at which side is incited to violence more often. It turns out, according to the FBI (which is a conservative organization historically and exclusively run by conservatives), right wing extremism and violence is in fact the biggest domestic terror threat in the US, and it's currently growing [1]. FBI Director Wray gave this testimony after a right wing domestic terror attack was carried out that aimed to topple the US government. Not much has changed since then [2]. Since the former President's indictment the other day, the right-wing violent rhetoric has also ratcheted up a notch, so we can expect right-wing violence to follow. Notably, we can confidently say this doesn't happen on the left, as when Hillary lost they did not launch an assault against the Capitol as the right did. Instead, they knit pink hats and had a march. (PS before anyone whattabouts the George Floyd protests, the FBI doesn't see them the same way [3]) https://apnews.com/article/fbi-chris-wray-testify-capitol-riot-9a5539af34b15338bb5c4923907eeb67 https://apnews.com/article/fbi-chris-wray-testify-capitol-ri... https://news.yahoo.com/right-wing-extremists-responsible-for-majority-of-deadly-terrorist-attacks-181352019.html https://news.yahoo.com/right-wing-extremists-responsible-for... https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrorism-strategic-report-2022.pdf/view https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrori...
    - yeahsure22 4y ago
      [dead]

mochomocha 4y ago

... Metrics tracked in AB test. So even if it's not explicitly encoded in the algo (or implicitly through some of the features plugged in), they'll pick the winning cell as long as it doesn't hurt Elon's metrics (I'm just parroting the comment you quoted). It doesn't have to be in the algorithm for the systems to be tweaked to please Elon vanity metrics. [I've been running lots of ML AB tests over the years, some in organizations of similar size & complexity as Twitter]

btown 4y ago
It’s just a two-pass EM (Elon Maximization) algorithm!
threeseed 4y ago
That lines up with reporting from Casey Newton a few days ago where a handful of VIPs e.g. Musk, LeBron James, AOC were being used as weather vanes to understand what the algorithm was doing. It definitely isn't just metrics. Any algorithm change that negatively affected Musk was clearly not going live.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- db48x 4y ago
  Do you think the code looked like that prior to Elon's purchase? I suspect that there was another name there before. Separately, which of these groups do you think that they use as a control?
  - jefftk 4y ago
    > which of these groups do you think that they use as a control? When you run an A/B test you randomly divide your users into groups, one (treatment) getting the new behavior and one (control) getting the current production behavior. So your question doesn't make much sense?
    - 4y ago

sva_ 4y ago

Ahh, the group of Elons. I was wondering why I see so many tweets by him, and what his "Group's" impression quote is. This is actually pretty hilarious.

nailer 4y ago
That’s not how it works. See the parent.
- sva_ 4y ago
  They said that they use it for metrics, so clearly there must be an "elon impression" metric.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    I imagine it's the largest metric in a mission control style room it starts dropping, klaxons start blaring, the room drops to red only lighting, engineers on the floor start pulling out their hair knowing the shitstorm that's coming
  - nailer 4y ago
    Yes, it’s not making anyone see any extra Elon tweets as your comment alleged.
    - jonny_eh 4y ago
      It means they won't ship features that hurt Elon's reach. So in a sense, it is biasing code changes in favour of Elon.
      - nailer 4y ago
        Why does it mean that?
wardedVibe 4y ago
Thankfully they haven't added a "no mute Elon" feature. Yet.

andy_ppp 4y ago

But who chooses the users to be metrics…

infogulch 4y ago

So many unnecessarily cynical takes here. Let's say you were in charge of a large legacy system that some segment of customers complain about it not working for them as well as other segments. How would you know whether their complaints are valid unless you measured it? You have to know first. So measure it.

xmprt 4y ago
I understand the value of measurements but how does measuring tweets from an individual user help?
- dorkwood 4y ago
  If engagement on the tweets of that user goes down after a change has been implemented, you can roll back the change to prevent that user from being negatively impacted.
  - nrb 4y ago
    What if engagements around that user naturally declined, perhaps due to that user going off the deep end. Wouldn’t this just serve to bias the algorithm toward propping up the exposure of that user? Do they even care about the control so long as that user’s engagement is up and to the right?
    - TigeriusKirk 4y ago
      He's very likely the user on the platform with the most engagement, and probably by a long distance. From that viewpoint, it does make some sense to use his account as measurement point.
    - v0idzer0 4y ago
      Come on think this through. It’s trivial to tell the difference between a gradual and natural decline and a drastic decline immediately after rolling out a change. Especially when the change is rolled out region by region and only exists in regions running the update. You have to be able to measure the effect of changes and the most popular accounts are the obvious low hanging fruit for doing that.

hn2017 4y ago

Per original source, The code that was released today doesn't show the parts that actually alter the scores of Elon and other users. The part of the code referenced below just tracks Elon stats (from what I know). Employees removed most PII before the code was released.

jasonhansel 4y ago

Interesting which "groups" they care about (e.g. mainstream political parties).

jalapenos 4y ago

Correct. It's a binary metric. Did the number go up, yes/no (kept job / not).