The Twitter’s Source Code Escape

Someone dumped Twitter’s source code  on GitHub, an ecosystem where geeks and developers share codes: “Parts of Twitter’s source code — a closely held trade secret — were leaked online, according to court filings. The social network moved Friday to have the code taken down by GitHub”. If you may ask me, the illegal play here is more consequential than a bank hack for a software company. Yes, if not that Twitter is an aggregator, it would be in serious trouble now. 

But as an aggregator whose value is in the user base or data created by the user base, the source code, while valuable, is not that killing, when leaked in this way, except the risk of bad guys seeing paths to hack the company. You can clone a better Twitter on software but without the users, you have no mission.

That is the deal: you can clone Facebook, Quora, LinkedIn and those aggregators, without their users, the products are not comparable. The value of the products come from the users within the tenets of network effect where the more the users, the better the value. The core value of Twitter is not just on the source code, but that it has users which are there.

Contrast this dump with say a Microsoft Office source code dump where the source code gives you the product, untethered from if another person is using it or not. Yes, when you use Microsoft Word or Excel, it is irrelevant if another person is using it. So, the source code creates massive business risks to Microsoft since any pirated one is a lost revenue. Laying hands on those codes can make bad actors build semi-versions of Office or Excel.

For Twitter, this is an escape because aggregators win through users. Of course you need to protect the source code to ensure you keep those users happy!

Twitter needs to close the flanks. No app. No browser. No right click. No disk interface. No savers. On machines with access to the server! Code Protection 101.

Parts of Twitter’s source code — a closely held trade secret — were leaked online, according to court filings. The social network moved Friday to have the code taken down by GitHub — the online forum where it was posted — and while GitHub took the code down that day, reports suggest it may have been public for months. Leaked code risks revealing software vulnerabilities to attackers and can also give competitors an advantage. The responsible party is believed to have left the company last year, The New York Times reports.

Roughly three quarters of Twitter’s staff were laid off or resigned since Elon Musk purchased the company in October. Twitter is looking to identify the user behind the account that shared the code and the information of all users who posted, downloaded or uploaded the data. Musk is offering employees stock grants based on a $20 billion valuation, less than half of the $44 billion he paid for the company last year.

As Twitter escapes, the US financial market may need the same luck: “Cash is leaving banks and flooding into money market funds at the fastest pace since the start of the pandemic, as businesses and investors seek safe havens following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. So far this month, more than $286 billion has moved into money market funds — which typically hold low-risk assets such as short-term Treasury bills. Corporations and small businesses, whose bank deposits may exceed the $250,000 covered by federal insurance, are likely leading the flight to safety, Axios reports.”

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