Court documents reveal that portions of Twitter’s computer code were leaked online. This poses a new challenge for the social media giant following Elon Musk’s takeover for $44 billion in late 2022.
Twitter has reportedly issued a subpoena to GitHub, a software collaboration platform, after an unidentified user known as “FreeSpeechEnthusiast” allegedly posted parts of Twitter’s source code without authorization. According to Twitter’s legal representatives, the aim of the subpoena is to identify the individual who leaked the code.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California received the filed documents.
CNBC confirmed that GitHub had honored Twitter’s request by taking down the code on the same day. The company’s spokesperson stated that GitHub shares all DMCA takedowns, which involve the removal of content from a website at the behest of a copyright holder, to ensure transparency.
Requests for comment from Twitter have not been promptly answered.
Earlier, Musk asserted that Twitter would unveil the code utilized to suggest tweets on March 31, and he anticipated that people would come across trivial problems. He also admitted that sharing the code transparently would initially be “extremely embarrassing.”
Our “algorithm” is overly complex & not fully understood internally. People will discover many silly things , but we’ll patch issues as soon as they’re found!
We’re developing a simplified approach to serve more compelling tweets, but it’s still a work in progress. That’ll also…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2023
As per the DMCA request disclosed by GitHub, the organization deleted “proprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools.” It remains uncertain whether the leaked code includes the source code employed to recommend tweets.
