Twitter 8$ blue badge as a measure to break a complex algorithm. How to balance the complexity to simplify it further?

Have you heard of the Okinawa mongoose? Unlike the Sika deer, it doesn’t symbolize Japan’s wildlife. The mongoose was introduced to Okinawa back in 1910, In an attempt to control the venomous snake population. It ended up being a bad decision since the snake is nocturnal while the mongoose is diurnal so they rarely meet. What makes things worse is that the mongoose starts feeding on birds, putting some to extinction. If Elon Musk’s decision about the 8$ blue badge went into production, it will be a mongoose decision.

Elon Musk Acquired Twitter and laid off 50% of the company’s workforce. It didn’t come to me as a surprise due to the challenging economy these days. Nevertheless, 50% is a high rate and we will discuss this next. What caught my attention is the new business rules he brought to the table. The 8$ blue badge, in particular.

When it comes to algorithms, I believe in simplicity. It is always more robust and gets the job done. Today’s social media products complicate the algorithms for ranking users’ activities. They end up with a complex product that is a nightmare to scale and maintain. Take for example this post, I will publish it on LinkedIn, but it won’t gain popularity and views as much as a simple meme post. That’s because the complex algorithm behind the scene jumped to a conclusion that this post is not as good for business as the meme post does. You get the absurdity of this if you are in your senses.

Have you heard the Bohemian Rhapsody Queen’s song? This song is a masterpiece. Yet, it didn’t hit the charts as fast as Beyonce’s vanilla songs. The fact that Beyonce’s songs are aggressively promoted, contributes to the recognized sellout. The advertising for her songs is very powerful. However, it doesn’t justify the quality of the content when compared to other less popular content.

50% dead weight

Twitter’s 8$ blue badge logic is very simple. Posts get ranked by a very simple rule. Moreover, blue badges get granted based on a monthly subscription. That would save dealing with imposters and censorship. Therefore, If that simple idea was put into action, then many of twitter’s workforce become deadweight and liable during these challenging times.

Is the 8$ blue badge simplicity justified?

The simplicity of this decision is justified but the measures of accomplishing it are debatable. As a user, I want my feed to be filled with posts that interest me. That’s very easy, I subscribe or follow other users that interest me, and their posts get viewed in a particular order on my feed. That order should be configured by me — the user, either chronologically, ABC’s ordered or ranked according to popularity or content quality. However, as a publisher, I want my posts to get promoted. For that reason, the simplest solution is to pay for post-promotion. Users which read all of their feeds will get the promoted posts in a configurable manner. They may get my profile as a recommendation due to the new content. Once they pass the publisher’s user in, the promoted post will be shown.

Balancing the complexity to simplify it further

The challenge lies within the posts without a monetized promotion. These may starve potential content. Previously twitter developed a very complex algorithm to prioritize those. Elon wanted to change this complex business logic by using the blue badge as the significant ranking mechanism. However, To not starve the uncommon publishers, he monetized the blue badge to allow those irregular publishers to hit the charts. The blue badgers’ community got outraged because their hard-gained blue badge is being used for that cause. It seems that Elon wanted to solve two challenges at once. This attitude backfired on him so he decided to keep it backlogged.

After all, it seems that Elon Musk fears Twitter’s blue badgers like bad cops fear internal affairs. That put another problem on his table: the 50% dead weight he laid off. Now he needs to either preserve the current logic for a while or come up with a new logic to solve the ranking mechanism.

The complex algorithm came to make Twitter’s simple feed more interesting. This complexity can be reduced by balancing it properly. A new section needs to be dedicated to a chart pinned into Twitter’s feed to reflect statistics on the latest activities. Potential unpaid content gains the opportunity within this chart. The stats should be configurable by either showing the latest frequent activity or the latest most popular activity. The goal of this section is to increase the followers for unpopular active users to transform them into follower feed so their content will gain more visibility.

The idea above divides Twitter’s business logic into two main algorithms. The first algorithm is straightforward. It displays to the users the content being followed. The second algorithm is a factory that introduces more content to the first feed. This mechanism balances the complexity inequity and reduces it after all by making it more solid.

Blue badges are still granted to famous users or registered companies to solve fake news issues.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.