X open sources its ranking algorithm, letting users see if they’ve been ‘shadowbanned’
X is open-sourcing its ranking algorithm, allowing users to see if they have been 'shadowbanned'. The company is making the source code for the 'For You' timeline available on GitHub, which includes the model configuration, filter, and core ranking system details. This move aims to address concerns about the algorithm's influence on politics, elections, and the spread of misinformation.
- ▪X is open-sourcing its ranking algorithm to increase transparency.
- ▪The source code for the 'For You' timeline is available on GitHub under the Apache v2 license.
- ▪A new transparency tool will allow users to see if their account or posts have been impacted by the ranking systems.
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Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | TechCrunch |
| Canonical URL | https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/13/x-open-sources-its-ranking-algorithm-letting-users-see-if-theyve-been-shadowbanned/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 13 Aug 2026 16:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-13T16:14:20.782Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-13T16:14:20.782Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | None |
| Cluster logic | Not yet clustered, or no peer story found in the clustering window. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
X is significantly expanding its open-source codebase, which includes the app’s “For You” algorithm and its core ranking engine, and adding a feature that will let users see if their account or posts have been impacted by any of its ranking systems, the social network said on Thursday. The company is making the source code for the “For You” timeline, the default feed you see when you open the app, available on GitHub under the Apache v2 license. It’s also expanding its previous efforts to open-source parts of its codebase to add more detail, including the model configuration, filter, and core ranking system details. That means it includes the parameters used to weight different signals — key to understanding which posts are actually displayed.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechCrunch.
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