What changed in X's algorithm in October 2026, from the code

X publishes its For You ranking code almost every day, with no changelog. So I went through the last two months of it and compared the versions. October brought a proportional cut of which posts get considered for your feed and heavier weights on likes and time spent. A new boost for small accounts landed just before it. For adult creators, the bigger story is in rules from the summer that label whole accounts.

This follows my June post, X published its algorithm. The code says you need two accounts, not one. Apart from my own account's report, everything below comes from X's own repository as of October 24, 2026. One caveat up front: the code carries default values, and what X runs in production can differ. I'm reporting what the code says.

What changed in X's algorithm in October?

Two things. On October 22, X changed how it trims the pile of posts it considers for your feed. And on October 13 and 14, it reweighted what counts most.

The trim first. Before it scores anything, X caps the pile at 2,800 posts. Until October 22 the code kept the first 2,800 in the list. Now it keeps a proportional share from every source: posts from people you follow, recommended posts, and so on. If the pile is 25% bigger than the cap, each source keeps about 80% of its posts. No one source gets squeezed out first.

What counts most in X's ranking now?

Likes and time spent went up, video views went down, and "not interested" got more expensive. The mid-October changes:

• A like now scores 0.66, up from 0.5 at the start of October.
• Time spent on a post counts 50% more than it did.
• "Not interested" costs -52.27, from -47.52.
• Opening a video dropped from 0.07 to 0.02, and a qualified video view scores 0.

The rest of the default table: a copy-link share scores 20, the highest weight I checked. Replies, quotes and DM shares score 5 each, and a follow scores 4. A reply from someone you follow each other with gets an extra boost on top.

How does X boost new posts from small accounts?

Since September 30, X can lift one fresh original post from a small account up to around 16th place in someone's feed. To qualify, the post has to be 2 hours old or less with under 200 views, and the account has to have 50,000 followers or fewer. Replies and reposts don't count.

The version before it gave a post up to 48 hours and 1,000 views. The new one is a much shorter window, and I think the follower cap is high enough that most independent creators fit under it.

Which post gets the lift isn't random. Among the eligible posts, X favors the ones whose first viewers liked them most. So the first two hours matter most, and a post that gets few early likes is less likely to get the push.

What matters for adult creators?

The rules that touch adult content mostly landed over the summer, and they work at the level of the account, not just the post.

Your recent posts can label the whole account. Since August, X has rules that look at how your recent posts were labeled, over a window of up to 10 posts, and can put an NSFW label on the account itself for up to 7 days. The exact thresholds live in config X didn't publish.

An NSFW-labeled account loses its cold reach. X's own description of the account label is that "the account's posts are hidden from recommendations to non-followers." The description only covers non-followers, so followers should still see you. In the ranking code, one filter does this by dropping NSFW-flagged accounts from a recommendation source; X's description says the effect covers recommendations to non-followers as a whole. My own account carried this label for 7 of September's 30 days, which I wrote up in my X playbook. In June I wrote that the rules behind these switches weren't published. Part of them now are, though the thresholds still aren't.

Adult content is now a higher brand-safety risk. Since August 24, the NSFW labels map to X's highest risk tier, up from medium. In the code that mostly governs where ads can appear, not your organic reach.

A new filter for brand-new viewers. Added October 22 and switched off by default: it would hide out-of-network posts labeled soft NSFW from viewers whose accounts are less than a day old.

Adult video gets checked as a post spreads. X's spam checks scan videos for adult content once a post reaches 64 likes, with a deeper check at 512.

Low-quality labels limit what strangers can do. If a post is labeled low quality, people who don't follow you see a warning, and the code can limit what they can do on it. Which actions are limited is set in config X didn't publish.

What should you do with this?

The small-account boost and the account labels point the same way. The boost doesn't check for adult content itself, but a post shown to people who don't follow you has to get past X's stricter safety checks first, and an NSFW-flagged account's posts are hidden from recommendations to non-followers. So the account you grow with should stay free of adult media across its recent posts, not just the one you're writing.

Post originals, not replies or reposts, since only originals qualify for the boost. Treat the first two hours as the window that counts. And aim for posts people want to send to someone: by default, a copy-link share outscores the other actions above.

When you want help spreading a post, ask for quotes, not reposts. One filter in the code drops out-of-network reposts and replies, but not quotes. A quote is the quoter's own post, so it can reach their audience and can qualify for the small-account boost on the same conditions. By default, a repost scores 1 on your post and a quote scores 5.

I'm still on one account myself. This is the setup I'm planning, not one I've tested. The current version of all of this lives in my X playbook for adult creators, which I re-check every month.

— Sly