X's Algorithm Is Public Now. Here's What Actually Matters for Normal Accounts

The last time I wrote about Twitter on this blog, I was poking fun at what Twitter is and what it isn’t, and documenting the problem hashtags being trended on.

The site is now called X. And now you can see the code that decides what will and won’t show up in your For You timeline: it’s on GitHub. X put its recommendations algorithm on GitHub in January 2026. And they’ve kept adding to it, with a changelog of sorts explaining what they changed and when.

Spending a weekend reading through that algorithm uncovered several misconceptions I’d had about beating the Twitter/X system, and a few things I didn’t see coming.

TLDR about beating the algorithm (read on for tips about getting the people who care to see your tweets): X’s For You algorithm heavily weights shares and conversations, and places nothing in the timeline above 48 hours old.

X picks What’s for You based on a variety of signals.

First, it pulls together a big batch of recent tweets. Then it makes a prediction about what you would do with each tweet. (Like, reply, retweet, quote, share, read through the whole thing, watch the video, click the profile, say “not interested,” mute, block, report, etc.) It combines those predictions into a single relevance score. Highest score wins. And it also filters out certain tweets that shouldn’t be shown to you at all.

As for where it pulls the batch of tweets from, there are a few places. It pulls recent tweets from accounts you follow (this is handled by a component of X called Thunder, which remembers recent activity of accounts you follow). Then it pulls in recent popular tweets (from a shared bucket), tweets it thinks you might be interested in (retrieved by the Phoenix component), and tweets from accounts it thinks you might be interested in based on SimClusters (groups of accounts and tweets based on who engages with what).

"One report cancels out 468 likes"? Lies. Here's the real deal: Reports are rarer than likes (by 1,000+) and need a hefty weight to register, but the weight is multiplied by the probability of a report, not the raw number. Since the probability is so dang low, a big ol' weight is needed.

Here are the current weights for specific actions on posts:

Action	Weight
Share by copying the link	20
Reply	5
Quote	5
Share via DM	5
Follow the author	4
Share (general)	2
Repost	1
Like	0.66
Click into the post	0.3
Open a link	0.2
Block the author	-31.2
Not interested	-52.272
Mute the author	-58.8
Report	-234

(Not interested, mute and Report all have massive negative weights)

Likes are nice, but it's the shares (especially "you have to see this" links sent in group chats) and replies that count the most. X wants its users to pass each other posts and talk about them, not just click a button. Shares (by copying the link), quotes, and replies have the highest weights, as they are more likely to move a post than likes. Opening a post and clicking a link in a post has a weight too, but it's much lower. The negative weights are massive, as X wants to discourage those kinds of actions.

Do mutual follows matter?

Answer: Yes.

The people I already follow and who follow me back matter more now. Since July 2026 the algorithm increases the likelihood that it will surface content from your followers who follow you back (mutual follows). This is called a "bidirectional follow" boost. On July 10, 2026 the algorithm started testing this change. On July 13, 2026 they rolled this out more widely (with a boost value of 20). On July 24, they turned the boost down to 15 after user feedback that we were missing out on content that we didn’t follow, like World Cup discussion, in our For You page. To date (November 1, 2026), the boost is still set at 15.

Bottom line: Content from your followers who follow you back matters more now. The algorithm gives preference to content from these people. So if someone who follows you posts something, there’s a higher chance the algorithm will present their post to you if you also follow them. Interacting with these people isn’t a waste of your time. It sends the strongest signals to the algorithm.

How long does a post have to get noticed?

Answer: Two days. The algorithm doesn’t even start to consider posts older than 48 hours for inclusion in your For You page. So if your post is older than two days, it won’t show up in For You.

A "cold start" mechanism helps fresh (under two-hour-old) posts from accounts with modest followings (50,000 or fewer) that haven’t gained much attention (under 200 impressions) get off to a good start. In that case, the post is given a slight boost toward the 15th slot in Home. It's still being tested, so not everyone gets it.

Mass reporting and brigading (directing a group of people to report a specific post) have less of an impact on a post’s visibility than many people believe. According to the weighting comments, reports and blocks only affect Home ranking if they happen on a post that was shown to someone in their own Home timeline. And since Home predictions are personalized, reports from one crowd tend to impact only what that crowd sees on Home (and what users who behave like them see).

Certain things keep posts from appearing in Home. You won’t see something you've already seen. Nor will you see posts from muted or blocked accounts, or matching your Muted words list. Same goes for reposts and replies from accounts you don’t follow. After posts are scored, they get re-ordered slightly by a special service to add a bit of variety (preventing similar posts from running together).

X uses a separate system from ranking to determine if something appears in your feed. Sometimes, X may prevent a post from appearing altogether. This is due to various spam and safety systems that X uses. Your posts could be affected by these systems and their labels may have one of four outcomes: they could be allowed, shown with a notice, shown behind a click through warning, or dropped altogether. Your followers may see posts that are blocked from others due to the recommendations system.

The labels X applies to your account and posts can be found on the Under the Hood page. You can also see if a post was withheld in a specific country due to a legal request, and which country it was withheld in. This feature has been added to the Under the Hood page since September 2026.

To avoid your posts being affected by these systems, your best bet is to just write something people want to read or share, and post it when your friends and followers are online. Trying to game the system isn’t worth it.

Here are the most important things to keep in mind about how X displays content in your timeline now. (But remember, these rules might change, because X is constantly running experiments and changing the algorithm to give different percentages of users different timelines. The source repo says it aims to reflect the production defaults, and any experiment with at least ~10% exposure. See details in the source repo, but don't put too much stock in the specifics there, because X keeps the live values in a config system and copies the main ones into the repo.)

• Ask Real Questions and respond to other people. Replies are even more important than likes, and responses from accounts you engage with regularly (mutuals) have even more power.
• Make Interesting Content: Oct 2026 findings from X itself say "Phoenix" (the model that ranks your feed) is now much better at predicting how long people spend on a post, and its retrieval model is now also trained to surface posts people read all the way through.
• Space Out and Keep Fresh Content: X's reranker spreads out similar content, and only posts no older than 48 hours make it in.
• Avoid Annoying Content: Having a lot of folks mute you or tell X they're not interested outweighs any likes you'll rack up.
• Links Are Not Bad Links: Contrary to the rampant rumors out there about "links being bad" (which are juuuuust guesses about what the X algorithm might be doing with links, since link presence information is fed into the reranker, but there is no link penalty in the published weights), focus on interesting content people will engage with.

Want to know how X (formerly Twitter) decides which posts to show you first in the For You tab? Back in 2010 I wrote that Twitter is a place to connect with others and not a place to beg for followers. X’s own code that creates the For You feed now is on GitHub. This means anyone can see how the For You algorithm works (for the most part).

So what does the code say about X’s ranking algorithm? Read on for more details. Want to get in on the replies, quotes, reposts and likes? Read on to see what actions count (and not count) the most.