Elon Musk Hires Prolific Hacker George Hotz To Fix Twitter Search


Twitter CEO Elon Musk sets his sights on improving the website’s search functionality, enlisting the help of prolific hacker and long-time critic George Hotz.

In the span of a 12-week internship, Hotz promises to “fix” Twitter search and introduce all-new features, such as the ability to search within liked tweets.

As the first person in the world to jailbreak the iPhone, Hotz is no stranger to bringing new capabilities to existing platforms.

However, what’s most notable about Hotz joining Twitter is his prior criticism of Musk, refusing to work for Musk at Tesla, claiming he could develop a better self-driving car system.

It appears the two are putting their differences aside out of a mutual interest in building a better Twitter search engine.

Hotz volunteered his services in exchange for the cost of living in San Francisco, and Musk seemingly took him up on the offer:

Now, Hotz is documenting the journey of implementing long-requested features that are commonplace in other search engines.

Like what?

For one, the ability to deliver relevant results that don’t contain the exact words used in a query.

Additionally, Hotz is crowdsourcing ideas for delivering more contextual autocomplete results when users type “from:” in the search box:

Hotz is enthusiastic about removing the sign-up prompt that appears when logged-out users scroll through search results.

After removing the popup, Hotz plans to implement a way for users to search within liked tweets:

Hotz also mentioned that Twitter’s advanced search feature should be featured more promptly, though he’s not in charge of UI updates.

Beyond those changes, what Hotz will do to “fix” Twitter search is mainly unknown. We’ll likely learn more as the days and weeks go on.

Stay up-to-date with the latest news on Musk’s Twitter with our continuously updated timeline of events.


Featured Image: rblfmr/Shutterstock

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