Twitter makes massive cuts again: Musk orders change in targeting advertising system

Last November, after Elon Musk fired about two-thirds of Twitter employees, he assured others that he was done with layoffs. However, now it has become known that despite this statement, the billionaire continues to reduce the staff. In addition, Musk ordered changes to the targeting advertising system within a week and announced that Twitter would release the source code of its recommendation algorithm next week.

Twitter's new cuts

Dozens of Twitter's sales and engineering staff were laid off last week, including one of Musk's direct reports who oversaw the development of the company's advertising business, The Verge reports. After acquiring the social network last year, this is actually the third wave of layoffs initiated by the billionaire.

In addition, Musk ordered to change the system of targeting advertising in the main Twitter feed within a week. Musk plans to change the system for targeting ads to work like Google's search engine, which means it will focus primarily on keywords rather than user activity and profile data. According to the source, this approach works well for the search engine, but that doesn't mean it will work well for social media.

Twitter monetization engineer Marcin Kadluczka, fired late last week, believes the company won't be able to change its targeting advertising system within Musk's timeline. It could last two to three months, he said. He also confirmed that Elon Musk did set a one-week deadline to make the necessary changes shortly before Kadluczka was fired.

Twitter will release the source code of the recommendation algorithm

Elon Musk announced that Twitter will release the source code for its recommendation algorithm next week. “Prepare to be disappointed at first when the source code for the algorithm is released next week, but it will improve quickly,” Musk wrote on the social network.

According to Techcrunch.com, the decision will help protect Twitter from excessive attention from U.S. political forces to the platform and its technical features. The U.S. Supreme Court is now hearing a case about how YouTube recommended videos from extremist channels to ordinary users, and various political forces are making proposals to scrutinize TikTok's recommendation algorithms.

In addition, when Elon Musk bought Twitter, many of his political opponents left the platform altogether and switched to a similar decentralized open-source social network, Mastodon. The publication of Twitter's algorithm will help counter this trend as well.