X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, has quietly launched another algorithm update– and it’s about making conversations more personal. And the new feature shows how much visibility a user's posts and replies are getting to the users’ “mutuals” – people whom they both follow and who follow them back.
The update was announced by Nikita Bier, Head of Product for X, who said that the platform had discovered a key gap in its recommendation system. Bier added that the algorithm was not factoring in mutual relationships which resulted in replies from strangers dominating familiar accounts, and therefore the algorithm was biased towards strangers.
Why X changed its algorithm
In a post announcing the update, Bier said internal data showed that information about mutual connections was largely missing from the recommendation algorithm.
As a result, replies from friends, creators users who often interact with and trusted connections were buried beneath comments from accounts they had never gotten involved with.
This led to the reply section becoming more like a battleground with people you don’t recognise,” Bier wrote.
Although the change seems small, it addresses a complaint that many X users have raised over the past year— that conversations become overwhelmed by unrelated or unfamiliar voices.
More familiar conversations
If you can see a lot more of those people who you know on the top of your conversation with the algorithm, you'll know where to start.
This change doesn’t change how the platform works so much as it improves the quality of interaction by focusing on the ones you’ve been around the longest.
The tweak should also make it easier for online communities to develop naturally around common interests, Bier said.
This should also help clusters form more easily around interests which many people have asked for, he said.
It is part of a bigger movement away from the algorithmic recommendation and towards deeper engagement from just reaching out in this way.
Competition with Threads
The timing of the update is significant as the competition between X and Meta-owned Threads intensifies.
Threads has also been revamping its recommendation system (“Your Algo”) and has added the ability to personalise and privately influence what gets added to your feed. Meta has increasingly focused on giving users more personal control on what content is being recommended as well as creating communities with common interest.
As Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has said previously, recommendation algorithms now play a central role in all social media sites.
AI-driven recommendations dominate social media
Today's major platforms (such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Threads and X) are heavily reliant on artificial intelligence to recommend posts, videos and discussions that can be seen and shared beyond a user's own network.
These AI-powered systems assess user behaviour, interests, history, likes and engagement patterns to determine what content appears in feeds.
But critics have claimed that such algorithms tend to focus on viral and controversial content in the way that they do not consider meaningful conversation around this.
In making mutual connections more prominent, X seems to be trying to strike a balance between AI-driven discovery and social relations.
A step toward more relevant discussions
Although the update would not be able to completely change the X experience overnight, it would most likely change the way conversations take place on the platform.
If you add new accounts to conversations you might find that you are more likely to have to read the details as well as the answers from their real-world friends who you don’t always see on Facebook/chat with regularly. If so, the conversation could be easier and healthier.
The algorithm update also signals X’s continued efforts to improve its recommendation system as competition among social media platforms intensifies. As companies increasingly invest in AI-powered content discovery, finding a balance between personalised recommendations and trusted social connections is becoming a key battleground.
For users, the new change means their timeline and reply sections may soon begin to look a little more familiar— and maybe a little less chaotic.
