X is working to further integrate its Grok AI tools into the app, with the platform now using AI to sort your “Following” feed based on “predicted engagement and relevance to you,” so you’ll no longer see either your “Following” or “For You” feed in chronological order when you log in.
Which hasn’t gone down well with some X users.
The change was announced last week, with X owner Elon Musk posting that:
“Posts of people you follow are now ranked by Grok. You can still access unfiltered chronological if you want.”
That means that your “Following” feed in the app is now ranked based on your past interactions, engagement with certain topics, signals from the accounts that you follow, etc.
And while X says that the change may be less impactful if you only follow a few accounts (fewer than 200), the update has been automatically switched on for all users in the latest version of the app.
It's also worth noting that X is now defaulting users to the “For You” feed, even if they closed the app in the “Following” feed last time, which is a new push to get users to check out the algorithm-powered timeline.
Conceptually, this all makes sense. Every other app has seen significant engagement gains by forcing users into an algorithm-powered “For You” feed, which no longer restricts them to content posted by accounts that they already follow. That means that each app can show each user the best posts, targeted to their interests, which keeps people scrolling, and helps to boost time spent, and engagement in the app.
It makes sense, but on X, it could be less valuable, due to the way in which people use the platform to stay up to speed with latest events.
Some users have suggested that this could hurt the app’s core value, in regards to X being a live feed of whatever’s happening in the world at any given time.
As per long-time X creator Rob Perez:
“X needs to always be the live microblogging hub of the world. No matter what else has happened on here or to the site, Twitter/X’s live utility was ALWAYS the business’ cornerstone. As long as it had this market cornered, it would survive its growing pains.”
Perez primarily posts about live NBA games, and his contention is that a shift away from live, in-the-moment updates will hurt X, due to the way in which people use it for this purpose.
Theoretically, that shouldn’t be the case, as the timeline can only rank content that’s already been posted, while live updates should still appear in real-time. Though even then, a shift away from timeliness, in favor of virality, will impact the dynamics of the platform, and could change the way that it’s used.
And it might also have an impact on political polarization, and the way in which X can influence political opinions.
A recent study found that when posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity are boosted on X even slightly, within the feeds of both Democrat and Republican supporters, “there was a large change in their unfavorable feelings towards the other side.”
In other words, even slight changes to algorithmic amplification can have a big impact on how users respond. And with X being increasingly dominated by right-wing talking points and commentators, this update could make it an even more divisive, partisan platform moving forward.
We don’t know the full extent of such impacts as yet, but it seems significant, and with X now trying to push people away from using the “Following” feed as the default, it does seem like this will be a major shift for Elon’s social media project.
Will that be a positive, or a negative change?
Well, with fewer people using X overall, it would appear that the influence of the platform is declining either way, so the relative impact will be less than it might have been before Elon took over at the app. But even with a smaller audience, X remains influential, and a push towards more of the content that X users have found engaging could make it an even more significant amplification tool for right-wing talking points.
How positive or negative that might be comes down to your own perspective.
And if X loses its throne as the best platform for real-time engagement, which app will take its place?
