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X (Twitter) algorithm changes in 2026

Last updated 2026-10-11. This is a changelog of the public tree xai-org/x-algorithm, gathered in X_ALGORITHM_BOOST_PLAYBOOK.md and the repo README. Search phrases like “X algorithm news” and “Twitter algorithm updates 2026” land here. Commit subjects in this list are “Open-source X Recommendation Algorithm” unless the README gives a different label. The repo does not attach these diffs to a personal announcement, so this page does not invent one.

The pipeline those commits sit on is How the X (Twitter) algorithm works.

2026-10-09 — cb45b55

Ranker attention and sequence packing inside phoenix/xrex/. The param file is touched to bump the sync timestamp. This is the commit the rest of these docs quote. Weight values in home-mixer/params/param.rs are the 2026-10-08 mirror (last sync 2026-10-08T16:00:35Z).

2026-10-08 — 35650fb

Video carousel parameters, default off. A video aspect-ratio hydrator. Favorite-count hydration on the Phoenix retrieval index (phoenix-rankall/src/hydrate/fav_counts.rs), so popularity can enter what is indexed, separate from the ranking sum.

2026-10-07 — 78460ca

PostUnexploredWeight moves from 0.02 to 0.015. EnablePopularPostsSource moves from false to true. The popular-posts source cap in the playbook is PopularPostsMaxResults 500. The README describes that list as starting from the most-followed active accounts.

2026-10-06 — e62790c

The vm-ranker cluster default moves from Experiment6 to Experiment1. The playbook does not describe what traffic each experiment name serves. A default change is not a measurement of whose feed flipped.

2026-09-29 — Brazil election list

The README says the account list behind Brazil2026ElectionFilter was updated on this date. The filter removes posts from accounts reported to Brazil’s electoral court unless the viewer follows them (home-mixer/filters/brazil_2026_election_filter.rs). That is a candidate filter, not a weight.

2026-09-04 — e4dcedd

A community change that dedupes in-network ids before a visibility-filtering lookup. Visibility itself stays a separate service. See Shadowban on X.

2026-08-13 — README release

The README’s August 13, 2026 section is the large public cutover:

  • Key configuration parameters, including the weights that blend predicted actions.
  • Code for systems that can filter a post out of For You.
  • Phoenix demonstration model replaced by training code and synthetic data, so a proof-of-concept training run is possible.
  • visibility-filtering/ decides show, drop, or interstitial.
  • Label-producing systems named in that section include botmaker, scarecrow, agatha, bdsm, user-cred-v2/, media models, and enforcement.
  • SimClusters ships as an out-of-network source beside Thunder and Phoenix retrieval.

The old demo weights (favorite 1.0, reply 0.5) lived in phoenix/run_pipeline.py, which is not in the tree after this release.

2026-07-24 — mutual reply boost

docs/BIDIRECTIONAL_BOOST_CHANGE.md in the x-algorithm repo records the reply boost on an original from a mutual follow: tested at +20, settled at +15 on 2026-07-24. The published reply weight is then 5, or 20 on that original. A reply you send does not receive the +15.

What did not change

Still absent after these commits: a day-of-week posting constant, a coded percentage penalty for a link in the post (open_link remains +0.2), a bookmark head, a Premium term in the weighted sum, and a numeric cutoff on slop_score. The Grox prompts are still not in the repo. Experiments can still override a default per viewer. WeightPerturbationSigma defaults to 0.0.

FAQ

What changed in the X algorithm in 2026?

In the public repository: the August 13 release published weights and visibility filtering and replaced the demo Phoenix model; the mutual reply boost settled at +15 on July 24; popular posts turned on and post_unexplored became 0.015 on October 7; favorite counts were added to Phoenix index hydration on October 8. Details and commit ids are the sections above.

Where is the Twitter algorithm news for 2026?

This page is that list, limited to commits and README notes. It does not reprint social-post commentary. If a claim is not tied to a path in xai-org/x-algorithm, it is not on this page.

Not in these commits. open_link is +0.2. There is no hashtag counter in the ranking sum. SpamHashTagAbuse and SpamScamLinks are classifier labels whose prompts are unpublished. See the myths page.