GitHub has taken down a repository by a user named “FreeSpeechEnthusiast” that contained Twitter’s proprietary source code after the social network filed a DCMA takedown request. The name could be a reference to Twitter the owner Elon Musk who has declared himself the “free speech absolutist” many times.
The day before, Twitter submitted a request to the District Court of Northern California in Northern California, asking GitHub to remove the code as well as assist in finding the perpetrator. The subpoena asks GitHub to disclose “name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), email address(es), social media profile data, and IP address(es)” linked with “FreeSpeechEnthusiast”.
The announcement is just a few days ahead of March 31, the day Musk is expected to open-source Twitter’s algorithm that is used to suggest tweets, something Musk has been promising for a while.
It’s unclear what portion of the Twitter source code was released to GitHub and for what length of time. The GitHub DCMA takedown blog stated that it was removing the repository that contained “Proprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools.”
The website that hosts code doesn’t specify whether any users could access the repository prior to when the company shut the site off the market. We contacted GitHub for their response and will update this report if we get a response.
Twitter might also be worried about the copies of their code, which were not posted to GitHub. A probe conducted internally at Twitter revealed that the individuals accountable for the leak left the company in January of this year, according to an article in The New York Times. The report also indicated that Twitter’s top management learned of the leak in the last few days.
The company has had ups and downs since Musk assumed the reins in the year prior. Recent reports indicate that Musk’s Tesla CEO values Twitter at around $20 billion, which is less than half of $44 billion he spent for the social media company. As per The New York Times, Musk sent an email to his employees to announce the launch of a new program for stock compensation in which he said Twitter may be worth $225 billion within a day.
Musk has taken a number of radical measures to reduce costs at Twitter which includes massive layoffs. Additionally, he has revived a subscription program that includes confirmation as one its advantages. According to the data of the company that analyzes data Sensor Tower, Twitter has been able to extract $11 million from this new service.
At a recent event, Musk said that time on users’ Twitter is poorly monetized.
“The typical amount users spend on Twitter each day of 250 million active monthly users] is around an hour or less. What we do have what is most fascinating to me -is that there are between 120-130 million hours of human interaction every day on Twitter,” he said.
“Every single day on, average, which is — I think it comes to a really interesting point which is to — just it’s startling how poorly monetized that is — because you have to say like how valuable is that attention 100 to 130 million hours of human attention per day of people that read — so these are the generally the smartest people in the world, the most influential people in the world.”
As we expected the moment we sent a message to Twitter, we were greeted with the emoji for pooping.
