Elon Musk wants Twitter’s algorithm to be public. It’s not that simple.

Conservatives have long claimed discrimination by the social network, but there’s no one algorithm that could prove it, researchers say.

If he succeeds in his $43 billion takeover, he wants to make public the computer code that determines what people see on Twitter to ensure the platform is fair. The algorithm determines the priority in which tweets get served up to users, either expanding or limiting how many millions of people see them. Specifically, he said he wants to make the algorithm that recommends whether a tweet gets promoted or demoted “open source,” or available for the public to view and improve upon. That, he said, will help prevent “behind the scenes manipulation.”

But Musk’s proposal probably represents a gross oversimplification of how it would work to make that data public, according to researchers who study recommendation algorithms.

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