California, 27 March 2023 (GNP): Twitter Inc., the social media network owned by billionaire Elon Musk, is seeking details on the offender after parts of its source code were revealed to have been leaked, according to a legal complaint filed in the US state of California on Sunday.
Twitter ordered GitHub, an online software development site, to take down the code after its unauthorized posting online earlier this month.
As per reports, various bits of Twitter’s source code, which is used to operate the company online on Github, was posted by a user with the username of “FreeSpeechEnthusiast.”
According to GitHub, the code was deleted on Friday at Twitter’s request.
In its March 24 lawsuit, Twitter has asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to order Github to provide “All identifiable information” regarding the username “FreeSpeechEnthusiast.”
Reuters contacted GitHub for comment about whether or not it had given such information, but GitHub did not respond right away.
It made no mention of how long the public had access to Twitter’s source code.
Also Read: China may choose TikTok ban over US acquisition
Exposing the inner workings of Twitter might leave the service more accessible to hacker attacks.
The leaker’s username appears to be a dig at Elon Musk, who made a big deal out of restoring free speech to the platform after he acquired the company at the end of last year.
The source code for tweet recommendations will be made public on March 31 according to Musk, who paid $44 billion to buy Twitter last October.
Twitter will open source all code used to recommend tweets on March 31st
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2023
Before the platform’s algorithm was made public, Musk said it was extremely complex and predicted that once it was, users would discover “many silly things.”
On Twitter, he remarked, “Providing code transparency will be incredibly embarrassing at first, but it should lead to rapid improvement in recommendation quality”.
“Most importantly, we hope to earn your trust”, he added.
