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Elon Musk says that in a week, the new X algorithm—meaning all the code that determines what you see in your X feed—will be made open source.
We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days.
This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 10, 2026
This comes amid significant public scrutiny all over the world of the @grok X account conspicuously fulfilling request after request to render photos of non-consenting people—including minors—scantily clad. But the expected update also relates to something Musk has been claiming he wants to do ever since he bumbled his way into ownership of Twitter back in 2022, saying at the time that “making the algorithms open source to increase trust” was part of his ambition for the site.
This latest transparency promise is likely the broadest one he’s made with an actual due date attached, and comes with a quicker timeline. He said in 2022, “Twitter will open source all code used to recommend tweets on March 31st,” giving himself a two-week window that time, and the site did indeed release a Github repository on that date containing at least a snapshot of the recommendations algorithm. Most of the files in that repository are from that initial upload, although some appear to have been updated as recently as four months ago
This was a partial code release, and hardly satisfied everyone’s expectations of an open source social media platform. For instance, a 2023 report saying Musk had demanded algorithm changes to boost the visibility of his own posts came from document leaks and anonymous interviews with X staff members, not from simply reviewing the code. And when Musk hinted at changes he wanted to make in 2024, Mark Cuban asked him “Can you post the expected algorithm source code, before you implement them? So users can give feedback?”
And it almost goes without saying that the site has been criticized as favoring and boosting right-wing opinions. A report from last year purports to demonstrate that this apparent new bias is systematic. X is also one of the places where shocking, uncensored footage of Charlie kirk’s assassination spread quickly last year.
Another possible reason for the sudden transparency: last year, investigators in Paris, France opened an investigation into potential fraudulent manipulation of the X algorithm, an effort Musk claimed was “distorting French law in order to serve a political agenda and, ultimately, restrict free speech.”
This latest expected update sounds a step closer to most people’s idea of what “open source” means. Musk’s post about the change says users can expect to see the “code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users” and that the release will be “repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed.”
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Mike Pearl
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