The recent case of Twitter being purchased by Elon Musk and the firing of the ‘Woke’ community that had entrenched itself there, has brought a new problem to the surface to be fixed. There are many millions of lines of code to the AI engine that is behind Twitter, and it takes time and a lot of effort to sort through them in order to remove the inbuilt bias.
One way, is for the automatic removal of accounts by the algorithm to be reported and then fixed by employees of the social media giant as they happen, in order to weed out the prejudice from the lines of code surrounding various morality and political stances. It’s likely to be some time before the site fully resembles a place that people can go to without fear of being censored or cut off.
Tucker Carlson wants to use it now
One voice that was recently fired from America’s mainstream Fox News, Tucker Carlson, has announced that he is prepared to try Elon Musk’s platform and is about to launch his face on Twitter to air news for the knowledge starved. An announcement on Twitter a week ago by Carlson about his demise from Fox received eight million views.
The removal of Tucker Carlson from his long time employment was further proof that in general the mainstream media are a thinly veiled mouthpiece for governments around the world, facilitating the promotion of agendas and corporate corruption, (many governments now consider themselves to be autonomous corporations and we, the people are clients).
The other free speech platform ‘Rumble’ is somewhere that has largely been untouched by censorship and is also a place where anti-war speak is welcome. It remains to be seen how commentators on Twitter, Rumble and to some extent YouTube are able to make headway against the pervasive Oligarch narrative.
It can take some time to overhaul a site.
The time it takes to alter the algorithms of a site like Twitter depends on a variety of factors, including the complexity of the changes being made, the size and structure of the development team working on the changes, and the processes and procedures in place for testing and deploying changes.
Small changes, such as tweaking the weighting of certain factors in the Twitter algorithm, could potentially be implemented relatively quickly, within a matter of days or weeks. However, more significant changes to the algorithm, such as a complete overhaul of the ranking algorithm or the introduction of new features, could take several months or even years to develop and fully deploy.
The development process typically involves multiple stages, including research and planning, design, development, testing, and deployment. Each stage can take varying amounts of time, depending on the complexity of the changes being made and the resources available.
Code can be hidden
Not to say that this is what has happened at Twitter, but code can be hidden within a large algorithm.
This technique is often referred to as “obfuscation” and is used to make it more difficult for others to understand or modify the code.
Obfuscation techniques can take many forms, including the use of complex variable and function names, code splitting and reordering, and the use of misleading comments or code structures. In some cases, obfuscation techniques can make the code appear to be more complex than it actually is, which can make it more difficult to reverse engineer or modify.
While obfuscation can be an effective way to protect intellectual property or prevent unauthorized modifications to code, it can also make it more difficult to maintain or update the code over time. In addition, obfuscated code can be more difficult to debug and can pose security risks if it contains hidden vulnerabilities or malware.
Getting it fixed
Social platforms such as Twitter typically have complex and sophisticated codebases that are not necessarily easy to understand for most people, especially those who are not experienced software developers.
Twitter’s codebase likely includes multiple programming languages, frameworks, and libraries, as well as custom code and algorithms that have been developed in-house. In addition, the codebase is likely to be very large and complex, with millions of lines of code spread across multiple modules and components.
While some parts of the Twitter codebase may be well-documented and have clear, easy-to-understand code, other parts may be more opaque and difficult to decipher without extensive knowledge of the system’s architecture and design. This complexity is not unique to Twitter and is a common feature of large-scale software systems.
That being said, the platform likely has an extensive documentation and training program in place for its developers to help them understand and work with the codebase effectively.
Additionally, the company has likely followed best practices for software development, such as modularization, code reviews, and testing, to ensure that the code is maintainable and high-quality over time.