The Twitter algorithm and the harm it brings to people's education on crisis

 Mass Layoff of Twitter Employees     Since the acquisition of the company on October 27th, Elon Musk has made plenty of moves to try to better his new company, however many of these actions have been scrutinized heavily by Twitter users and the overall public. The unrest and unsteadiness of the company can be considered to be a cause for the current drama due to the release of the algorithm, and looking deeper into the chaos that was caused by the layoffs within the company might be able to shed a little bit of light on the issue.      Upon Musk's takeover, he promptly fired approximately half of his workforce which inevitably led to an incredible amount of worry from the tech industry, Twitter users, and Twitter employees. This unannounced and sudden layoff wave led to a lot of breached contracts from Twitter's end, resulting in severance packages getting paid out to employees, and enormous amounts of money being paid out to the executives who were also fired in a breach of t

 A Lack Of Communication     The most important step for a company to take during an ethical crisis is to speak up and be transparent. Telling your customers what the intent was, what the result was, and what steps are going to be taken to solve the issue is paramount to maintaining trust and credibility with your users. Since April 2nd's reveal that the Twitter algorithm has been down-trending the Ukrainian war crisis, there has been no communication from either Twitter or Elon Musk on the subject. The only communication from Musk's part has been his posting jokes and "memes" on his Twitter page, showing either a disinterest in the issue or just not knowing its existence.     It is important to take note that it has been a very short while since the release of the algorithm as well as the findings of the censoring. However this is still no excuse for there to be no communication on the subject, and rather having the CEO posting jokes. Twitter has in recent months mov

 Twitter and Past Issues and Drama     Twitter being one of the largest social media platforms comes with a lot of issues, both within the app as well as in management. Ensuring that user freedom is maintained while also managing potentially harmful messages is a very thin line to walk and there will inevitably be slip-ups that make users unhappy. However, that is not the sort of issue to be addressed here, rather, identifying the instabilities in the core of the company and their roots are far more important.     On April 14th, 2022, Elon Musk made a buy offer to Twitter executives for $44 billion. This offer came after he had purchased a large amount of stock from the company, making him the highest shareholder in the company as well. The offer was accepted on the 25th, followed by Musk's reform plan for the platform, headlining changes such as making the algorithm open source, removing bots, and promoting free speech. Issues arose when Elon Musk attempted to back out of the deal

 The Twitter Algorithm and It's Harm       On February 24th, 2022, the Russian Federation escalated the long Russo-Ukrainian war by invading Ukrainian territory to occupy it. This horrendous act was broadcast across news networks around the globe and was discussed on social media sites for months, and still is. However, if you've felt that information on the war has been lacking on social media, there's a reason.      On March 31st, Elon Musk and Twitter company released their recommendation algorithm to the public in an attempt to increase transparency on user interaction. This was a move welcomed by many users as they might be able to discover how to boost the popularity of their tweets, and Twitter user Aakash Gupta (@aakashg0) alongside a group of other users started to work on picking apart the code.       What they found was so profoundly shocking that Aakash needed to write up a whole paper on the subject. The Twitter algorithm was  down-trending  the whole topic of