Thread by @AlexFinn

Elon announced last night that the X algorithm is going to change dramatically this week

Several months ago he asked me what changes I'd make

I went through every single line of code

Here's every change I'd like to see that will make X 100x better:

🔶 Post Ranking

Below is the code used to rank posts

There are a ton of variables that determine the rank, and none of them are known to the user

A major improvement would be adding this score to the UI, with an explanation of how the score was calculated

If users know why their post was prioritized or deprioritized, they can avoid making the same mistakes again

This should radically improve the quality of content over time. Improving both the user and platform experience

Transparency is king

🔶 User Reputation

Below is code I found on user reputation

You have variables around follower ratio, account age, and others

This should be brought to the UI as well

Users should be able to see their reputation and how it was calculated

This will encourage better behavior

Something as simple as a user score privately shown in analytics would be helpful for everyone

Talk about controversial topics? Get marked as controversial

Bot your posts? Get marked as such

This kind of transparency will instantly improve user behavior

🔶 De-ranking based on engagement

Here is code that de-ranks accounts with bad follower to following ratio

We need to have a platform that ENCOURAGES engagement with others

The more people want to connect and engage with others without the fear of silencing, the better

🔶 Too small Time To Live

Here is some recent code changes you made that increased TTL of posts from 24 to 48 hours

This needs to be increased to a week+

Quality content (especially videos) are disappearing too quick

Competing platforms feature A+ content for months

Especially with your increased emphasis on videos, quality video content needs to perform better

Right now videos are dying too quick and getting terrible retention rates

If you want to compete with other multimedia platforms, videos need to be featured for weeks on timelines

🔶 Naughty words

Currently you have a file of blacklisted topics that instantly de-rank posts

While people are smart enough to figure a few of these out, we should have more transparency around which topics get our content hidden

This should be shown in the UI as well

This comes down to 2 things:

Transparency + Encouragement of good content

When you purchased X you promised transparency and free speech

Adding full transparency in the UI around what impacts content would make open conversation a lot easier

Encouraging high quality content by surfacing it for longer will bring more creators here

Encouraging conversation by rewarding engagement, not punishing it will make this town square WAY more fun to be in

Transparency + Quality content and engagement

This is how X wins

Agree with my assessment? Disagree with my assessment?

Let me know in the replies to the first post

I create on X full time. The easiest/most free way to support me is to leave a like and RT on the first post (appreciated!):

https://x.com/AlexFinnX/status/1759980194549444981?s=20

I've spent hundreds of hours going line by line through every single file in this code base (it's massive)

If you'd like more insight on the algorithm and how X works, I'd encourage you to follow @AlexFinnX

And if you have any questions I do live content daily at 4pm est