'Open source it': Facebook whistleblower dares Elon Musk to 'publish the algorithms' controlling Twitter

01 January 2023

On Sunday's edition of Meet the Press, former Facebook executive-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen said that if Twitter owner Elon Musk is truly interested in transparency and championing free speech that he should make public the algorithms that determine what users see on their timelines. Musk pledged to do that earlier this year, and while he has yet to follow through, Haugen believes that it would be a huge step in fostering safer experiences online.

"Should government be focused on user protection, consumer protection, more than trying to regulate the companies?" NBC moderator Chuck Todd asked Haugen.

"That's a great question, right? Other industries are kept safe because there is something I call the ecosystem of accountability," Haugen replied. "And there's lawyers that understand what a cut corner looks like. There's investors that understand how to manage for long-term returns. Remember, Facebook stock price is down like seventy percent right now. That's informed citizens like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. That's legislative aides that understand what's possible. Right now, that entire ecosystem is missing because the social media companies hid the information. And so when we talk about, should we be protecting users, we are so far at the beginning that it is difficult to even put everyone at a table and say, this is the menu of what's possible. Let's negotiate what the floor looks like."

Continuing on, Todd pressed Haugen to assess the prevalence of secrecy across similar digital platforms:

I know you don't have as much insight into other tech companies, but should we assume that this opaqueness on algorithms and how things work is similar at Twitter and at TikTok and at YouTube?

Haugen:

A hundred percent. So one of the most important things Mark Zuck – that Elon Musk could do to prove that he wants to have the public square – is he could publish the algorithms.

Todd:

Open source?

Haugen:

Yeah, open source it. He'd have more help. It'd be cheaper for him. He'd be more profitable. But companies like TikTok have the exact same problems, if not more so because TikTok is a company that is designed around being censored. You know, it comes from China. It's designed to amplify things so much that only a few pieces of content make up eighty percent of all of our feeds. And they manually screen those. We deserve to know what those policies are because they're influencing what information we get to see.

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