It's the dawn of a new era for Elon Musk's X, and while the social media platform that was once beloved as Twitter seems barely recognizable these days, the world's richest man is seemingly trying to push it in a positive direction.
Twitter's $44 billion acquisition went through back in October 2022, but since then, Elon Musk has ridden a tidal wave of lawsuits, mass exoduses, falling share prices, and more than a little controversy surrounding his Grok chatbot.
Even in the past week, there have been rumblings that the United Kingdom could ban X amid accusations that Grok has been manipulating pictures of minors.
While some critics are claiming that Mr. Musk is trying to distract us from this scandal, he finally seems to be making good on a promise he made all the way back in 2022.
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Positing on January 10, the tech billionaire said that all the code relating to why your timeline looks like that will be released in seven days, meaning January 17 is the one to mark in your diary.
Musk said this open source release will include all code "used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users."
Better yet, he promised it will be repeated every four weeks and include 'comprehensive' developer notes to help users understand what's been changed.
As reported by Reuters, this could be in response to the European Commission extending a retention order that it sent to the social media giant in 2025. Spokesperson Thomas Regnier confirmed that the order that's now been dragged out until the end of 2026 covered algorithms and the dissemination of illegal content.
Paris prosecutors started investigating supposed algorithmic bias and fraudulent data extraction in July last year, which X clapped back at, saying it was a "politically-motivated criminal investigation" that was threatening free speech.
This culminated in a $140 million fine that was issued over the likes of the paid-for X Premium and a reported lack of transparency in terms of handing over data. Musk has vowed to fight against the fine, and even threatened action against the 'individuals' he believes are behind the investigation.
Back when Musk first handed over the dollars for Twitter, he said: "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans."
Even though the algorithm going open source might sound like it's a move in the right direction of transparency, many are approaching the announcement with trepidation, and are sceptical whether Musk will stick to his promise of monthly updates.
Responding to his original post, one person's comment had over 1.1K likes as they wrote: "Yall have done this before, nothing will change. It's even worse now.
“You literally have a r*tard running this sh*t and X has been downhill only since you hired him. It's nothing but literal porn, hate speech or political garbage..."
Another raged: "X needs to understand why users liked TWITTER - it was simple, you could freely build community and trust, and info exchanges quickly. That is why you wanted it, because it was powerful.
"X has fallen way off. It's barely usable for many. Stop listening to your employees who treat genuine users with contempt. I don't think they really know what is best."
Elsewhere, one supporter concluded: "This is what real transparency looks like. Open algorithms, visible rules, and no secret political weighting – exactly why the establishment is panicking about X."