I read X's publicly released algorithm code. The findings changed how I think about every post.

X released their recommendation system as open source. It's at xai-org/x-algorithm on GitHub if you want to look yourself.

I went through it properly. A few things worth knowing if you're trying to grow on the platform:

The scoring formula has 15 signals. Likes rank 11th out of 15.

The signals that actually move the needle:

follow_author: Someone follows you directly from a post. Highest weight in the entire formula. Every post should be engineered to convert viewers into followers.

share_via_dm: Someone sends your post to a specific friend in DMs. Second highest. One DM share likely does more for your reach than 20 likes.

quote tweets: The only action that fires TWO independent signals simultaneously. Quote plus engagement on the quoted post.

There are 10 pre-scoring filters.

Your post gets eliminated before the AI even evaluates it if you fail any one of these. The most brutal is the age filter. Posts past the retention threshold are removed from the ranking system entirely. Post when your audience is asleep and the post may literally expire before they wake up.

Posting more hurts you.

author_diversity_scorer.rs applies an exponential penalty every time you appear more than once in a single feed refresh. 10 posts in a day gives you roughly the same reach as 2 posts, while generating way more "not interested" signals from followers who didn't engage with the weaker content.

The whole repo is public. Everything above is verifiable.

What questions do you have about how it works?

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