Sloane Bennett

X AI ALGORITHM UPDATE 🚨 X just confirmed in their open source algorithm how small accounts get found by strangers now: posts people read all the way through (so write posts worth reading to the end) tl;dr: - today X confirmed in their changelog that it picks posts for people who don't follow you partly by how often they get read to the end - X also got much better at predicting how long you'll spend on a post - X put both in writing today, they went live earlier this month - no score changes this time lesson learned: write posts people finish. Your first line gets the tap, the rest has to hold them. full details: - X said it out loud X keeps a changelog at the top of its open source code. Today it added two lines about changes it quietly made earlier this month. Live since October 8th: its ranking does a much better job of guessing how long you'll spend on each post. Live since October 13th: the part that finds posts for people who don't follow you is "now also trained to surface posts that people read all the way through." So the news today is X confirming it. The changes have been working for 2 weeks. (I check the open source algo daily with Claude and share updates with you) - Why that matters if you're small When you're small, most of your new readers are people who don't follow you yet. That's exactly the part X changed. Posts that get read to the end now have a better shot at reaching them. - It lines up with the numbers Earlier this month likes went to 0.66, the time-spent score went up 50%, and staying 10+ seconds after tapping into a post is worth 0.4. Same direction every time: X wants posts people actually read. - What didn't change Your new posts still get their extra push in the first 2 hours and first 200 views, and they're no longer cut first. No scores moved this time. Here's a recap of what you should be doing: - posts people finish now win twice, in X's ranking and in how X finds you new readers - each like is worth 0.66, the highest it's been - the longer people stay on your post the better, that score went up 50% this month - 10 seconds on your post after a tap adds another 0.4 - new posts get their extra push in the first 2 hours and first 200 views, so post while your audience is awake - that push goes to the new post whose early viewers like it most - under 50K followers, the push can put one new original around 16th in a feed - copy link shares top the whole list at 20 - a reply, a quote or a DM share is worth 5 each - mutuals replying to each other score 20, so follow back people who keep showing up - only original posts reach people who don't follow you - like number 1 and like number 32 both open new paths to strangers - one great post per feed beats two, the second one only counts 62% - for the video lists, videos still need to run longer than 10 seconds - someone following you because of a post gives it 4 more - a badly rated site linked in your pinned post can label your whole account for 7 days What you should NOT be doing: - a post people open and leave fast scores just 0.3 for the tap - video gets no special treatment, 0.02 to open it and 0 to watch it - each likely "not interested" now costs -52.27, so off-topic posts can hurt - 3am posting wastes your 2 hour window - replies and reposts never leave your follower circle - an insult label hides your post from everyone who doesn't follow you - a low quality or misinfo label adds a warning and blocks likes and shares from non-followers - 3 adult images or videos out of your last 5 posts and the account gets a label - videos get checked for hidden content at 64 likes and again at 512 - stacking your own replies under a big account's post can wipe out their score - a single account label ends your reach to non-followers - keep badly rated links off your pinned post - posting the same wording again can get flagged as copypasta - tagging strangers next to a low quality link is a known spam pattern - engagement bait gets labeled whatever your size - back-to-back posts compete with each other in the same feed - piles of hashtags don't help - bookmarks score nothing - once a post is 2 days old, For You stops showing it