On the 10th of January, 2026, Elon Musk communicated that X would make its recommendation algorithm open-source within seven days, including all the codes that determine posts’ organic and paid visibility. Thereafter, updates would come every four weeks with developer notes clarifying changes, and the goal was to enhance transparency in the face of complaints from users about feed relevance.
Musk statement Context
Musk used the platform to announce: “We are going to make the new X algorithm… go public with its source in seven days,” thus he revived his commitment from the 2022 takeover of Twitter. A limited 2023 GitHub release turned out to be obsolete, and this raised doubts since xAI’s Grok was not updated even though Grok-3 was making progress. The change was made during the EU investigation into algorithmic prejudice and the controversy around Grok’s being used for deepfakes.
The Promises of the Past
There were claims by Twitter that it had made the “For You” feed code open-source in March 2023; however, the analyses showed the omission of essential logic. Musk made a promise of frequent releases at that time, but he did not keep up with the updates. This made the public and experts doubtful about the time-bound commitment.
Consequences of the Event
The company may have to reveal its practice of making the customers “angry” by releasing the whole system. This criticism has been made not only by France and the EU regulators but also by the users who complain about not seeing posts from the accounts they follow. Developers might fork it for simply building their own applications, while advertisers gain insight into reach mechanics.
There Might Be Stormy Weather
The situation at Grok in terms of the generation of CSAM and nonconsensual imagery is already being closely monitored by the EU, which has even extended the retention orders until 2026. Open-sourcing may bring about audits, but it also poses a risk of misuse if, at some point, biases or flaws are made public.
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