How the feed is ordered

1. The formula

Score = (base value + interactions) × author weight × age factor

Each part is explained below. Whatever scores highest goes first — there is nothing else to it. We do not publish the exact weights; section 7 says why.

2. What an interaction is worth

Writing a reply takes effort and suggests the post was worth engaging with. A like takes a tap. So they are not worth the same:

• A comment counts for the most.
• A repost or a quote counts less than a comment, more than a like.
• A like counts for the least of the things that count.
• A view counts for nothing. Not a little — nothing.

3. Why views count for nothing

Rewarding views is precisely the mechanism that makes a feed optimise for attention. A post seen by thousands that moved nobody should not outrank one that started a conversation. We show the view count, but it does not enter the ordering.

4. Author weight

People who consistently post things others engage with seriously accumulate Resonance. That value multiplies the score rather than replacing it: an empty post from a well-regarded person stays low, while a discussed post from an unknown one rises. The weight is capped so no single account can take over the feed.

Resonance fades. Untouched, it falls to half over about a year, which is slow enough that taking a few months off costs you nothing you would notice, and slow enough that it cannot be a treadmill. Nothing is deducted for being away — everyone fades at the same rate, and one post people engage with earns back more than a long stretch of fading takes. The point is that standing describes what someone contributes now, not what they contributed once.

5. Age factor

A post's score halves over roughly a day. The decline is gradual — nothing drops out abruptly. Deliberately on the slow side: a frantic feed you can never keep up with is the opposite of what we are building.

Every post starts with a base value, which is why a new post with no reactions at all is still visible. Without it, a new account would never reach its first reader.

6. What does not happen here

We do not promote posts because someone paid for it. We do not weight by how long you linger on something. And there is no personalised ordering behind your back: everyone sees the same public feed in the same order.

Your own home feed — posts from accounts you follow — stays strictly chronological. If you chose to follow someone, that is a decision, and no algorithm should overrule it.

7. What is still missing

Against coordinated upvoting we weigh two things against each other: how balanced an exchange between two accounts is, and what share of someone's total endorsement points at a single account. Only both together count. Admiring someone without getting anything back is not penalised. Trading endorsements with one peer and almost nobody else costs a substantial part of the weight — never all of it, because people who work together genuinely do support each other.

The same reasoning covers circles. Endorsement that leaves an account, travels on and comes back to it is scored by what share of each participant's output carried it round. Pair by pair, a circle looks perfectly one-directional and therefore innocent; as a closed circuit it does not. Adding a third account is the obvious way around a rule that only looks at pairs, so it is not a way around this one.

This is where the detail stops, on purpose. How much activity it takes before we look, over what period, and how hard the discount bites are not published. Knowing those numbers helps nobody write better posts; it only helps someone stay just below them. What a post earns is above; where the tripwires sit is not.

What is still missing: coordination that never closes into a circle — a group all pushing one account, say — is not caught by any of this, and a sudden jump in someone's standing is not flagged for review.