Yet that week became the next week and the week after that. Then, finally, very early Friday morning, over a month after the original announcement, Musk committed to making Twitter's algorithm open-source that day.

The opposite of open-source software is, logically, closed-source.

As David Gelman, a New Jersey lawyer, explains, "Closed-source software is another way of saying 'proprietary.' In other words, the company that builds it owns the rights to its use. If you want to use you, you ask and pay."

While Musk's move to make Twitter's algorithm open-source is all over the news, no one is explaining how the algorithm works.

Twitter's algorithm is designed to display the most relevant and engaging content to users based on their interests and activity on the platform. There are several factors that Twitter takes into consideration when deciding which tweets to display on a user's timeline, including:

Relevance: Twitter analyzes the content of each tweet to determine if it is relevant to users' interests based on their activity and engagement on the platform.

Recency: Twitter prioritizes recent tweets over older ones to ensure that users are seeing the most up-to-date information.

Engagement: Twitter measures the engagement of each tweet, including likes, retweets and replies, to determine its popularity and relevance to a user's interests

Media type: Twitter's algorithm favors tweets with visual media such as images, videos and gifs, as they tend to be more engaging.