X changes, explained
How the X (Twitter) algorithm works in 2026, from X's own code
Most of what gets said about the X algorithm is guesswork. X has published the code, and
in August 2026 the weights too, so we can just read it. Here is what it says.
By Lovlin Thakkar, who builds Muffle
·
· 3 min read
X put its first recommendation code on GitHub in March 2023. In January 2026 it published a
new one at xai-org/x-algorithm,
built around a ranker based on xAI's Grok. In August 2026 it added the scoring weights. I read
through it so you do not have to. Everything below comes from that code or X's own notes on it.
How a post reaches your For You
Every time you open For You, the system runs the same steps:
- Gather. Posts from accounts you follow come from one source. Posts from
accounts you don't follow come from others: similar-interest clusters, a retrieval model,
and a list of popular posts.
- Throw out. Before anything is scored, posts older than 48 hours, posts
from accounts you blocked or muted, posts with your muted words, and posts you have already
seen are removed.
- Score. The ranker predicts how likely you are to do each thing with each
post: like it, reply, repost, open it, block the author. Each guess is multiplied by a
weight and added up.
- Mix. A reranker stops one account filling your screen. Then ads and Who
to follow are blended in.
Posts from accounts you don't follow get their score multiplied by a factor below 1. So do
replies and reposts from accounts you do. X has not published that number.
The weights
These are the numbers X published in August 2026. A bigger number means that action counts
for more. A negative one pushes the post down.
| What the ranker predicts you will do | Weight |
|---|
| Share it by copying the link | 20 |
| Reply | 5 |
| Quote it | 5 |
| Send it in a DM | 5 |
| Follow the author | 4 |
| Repost | 1 |
| Like | 0.66 |
| Click a link in it | 0.2 |
| Block the author | −31.2 |
| Tap "not interested" | −52.3 |
| Mute the author | −58.8 |
| Report it | −234 |
Two things stand out. A like is nearly worthless next to a reply or a share. And the
negative signals are huge: the weight on a mute is about 90 times the weight on a like.
Replies also get a boost when they come from people you follow and who follow you back. X
tested that in July 2026 and settled on 15.
What this means for your feed
The weights are about you, not about the post. The ranker is guessing what you personally
will do. So the fastest way to change what you see is to give it the negative signals:
"not interested" and mute, on the posts you don't want. Scrolling past says almost nothing.
A mute is the strongest tool you have short of reporting. It also removes the account
before scoring even starts. That is why muting the handful of accounts that annoy you most
does more than hours of liking things you do want.
Claims the code does not back up
- "Premium gets a 4x boost." True in the March 2023 code, which gave paid
accounts 4x with followers and 2x elsewhere. It was gone by July 2023. The 2026 scoring code
has no Premium term. Premium does feed an account-credibility score used for labels, not
for ranking.
- "One report cancels hundreds of likes, so mass-reporting kills reach."
X's own notes reject this. The weights apply to one viewer's predicted chance of reporting,
not to a count of reports.
- "Posts with links are buried." The 2026 weight for a link click is
positive. I found no explicit link penalty, though that is not proof there isn't one.
- "Grok reads every post and judges its tone." Musk said this in October
2025. The prompts that would show it are not in the published code, so nobody outside X can
check.
If you would rather not be ranked at all
The Following tab is supposed to be the escape, but since late 2025 X ranks that too by
default. X says newest first is still there as an option. If you want no feed at all, the
guide to turning off the X feed covers
every option, and Muffle's No distractions does
it for free while posting and replies keep working.