X gets new update, friends not strangers will show up more in your post replies now

X is changing its algorithm in order to boost the visibility of posts of mutuals – the people you follow who follow you back. The change, announced by X's head of product Nikita Bier, is aimed at making the reply section feel less like a battleground and more like a community.

In Short

• X has updated its algorithm to give more visibility to posts from mutuals
• X's head of product, Nikita Bier, announced on X
• The change should also help communities form around shared interests more easily

If your X reply section has been feeling like a room full of strangers lately, that might be about to change. X has quietly updated its algorithm to give a visibility boost to posts from your mutuals, the people you follow who follow you back. The change was announced by X's head of product, Nikita Bier, on Monday.

Bier said on X that the platform noticed that data about mutual connections was simply missing from the algorithm, which meant your friends were showing up less in your replies. "This resulted in the reply section feeling more like a battleground with people you don't recognize," he wrote. The fix is small, but the problem it addresses is one that a lot of users may recognise.

What actually changes

The tweak won't completely transform how X looks or feels, but it should make the reply section a little less chaotic. Instead of being flooded with responses from accounts you've never interacted with, you're more likely to see replies from people you actually know and follow. Bier also noted that the change should help communities form around shared interests more easily, “This should also help clusters form around interests more easily, which many people have asked for,” he wrote.

It's a relatively subtle shift, but it signals that X is paying attention to how the social side of the platform actually feels to use, not just how much content it can surface.

The timing of this move is also interesting given what's happening over at Threads. Meta's rival platform has been making its own algorithm changes aimed at building communities, including a feature called Your Algo that lets users privately control what appears in their feed.

While announcing this change last month, Instagram head Adam Mosseri pointed out that recommendation algorithms have become a major part of social media over the last decade. Platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, X, Threads, and Instagram increasingly rely on AI-driven recommendations to surface content from accounts users do not necessarily follow.

And now, this unknown yet predictable algorithmic system is changing. At least that is how tech leaders are putting it – said to be giving more control into the hands of users.

Threads recently crossed 500 million monthly active users, and X's latest tweak suggests the competition between the two platforms is pushing both to make their feeds feel more personal.

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