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New blog: Twitter released some of its code, but not the ML models that recommend tweets, while cutting off researchers' API access. It shows the limited utility of source code transparency.

The one useful thing we learned was how Twitter defines engagement. But that wasn't actually part of the source and was published separately! This type of transparency about how algorithms are configured should be considered essential, and doesn't require release of source code.

https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/twitter-showed-us-its-algorithm-what-does-it-tell-us