X ranks copy-link shares 40 times higher than likes
Reviewed by Helen Jones
X’s open-sourced For You ranking file lists ShareViaCopyLinkWeight at 20.0. Likes sit at 0.5. Replies, quotes, and DM shares are 5.0. Retweets are 1.0. Reports are -234.0. The file was last synced with production defaults at 16:21 UTC on 18 September 2026. The scorer does not add up raw clicks. It multiplies each action’s predicted probability by these weights, then sums them. Mute author is more punishing than block author. Profile clicks and video quality views default to zero. Opening a post from a group chat does not move rank. X has not published how often each action happens, so a large weight can mean the action is rare as well as valued. Feature switches can override the snapshot. Ads sit in a separate blending path.
For years, founder-led content on X was judged by likes, impressions, and public retweets. Those numbers were easy to chase and easy to fake as proof of traction. The documented defaults now treat a like as almost noise. What the feed is scoring instead is whether someone is predicted to copy the link and pass the post on. That is a private distribution signal, not a public applause signal. A post that looks quiet in the like count can still be the one the algorithm wants, if people treat it as something worth sending.
Analysis
Treat this as a change to act on in your next posts, not a reason to rebuild your whole content machine. Write one post this week that a buyer would copy-link to a peer: a specific bottleneck, a proof point, or a clear offer, then check whether people actually send it rather than whether it collected hearts.
Source note
Pulse published by Collab365 Spaces, reviewed by Helen Jones on . Cite as "X ranks copy-link shares 40 times higher than likes", Collab365 Spaces. 2 sources referenced.