How your feed is ordered

Every public post on a public account is shown to its first 100 people, whoever wrote it and however few followers they have.

One place in five of For you is kept for these posts. A post keeps its turn until 100 people have seen it or it is 72 hours old, whichever comes first, and the posts fewest people have seen go first.

A post is judged by the share of the people who saw it that responded, not by how many responses it has. Responding is reacting, commenting, saving, following the author from the post, or watching a video past half. A person counts once.

Five posts published at the same moment by accounts with no followers, in the order these rules place them:

1. 130 of 100 people reacted
2. 28 of 20 people reacted
3. 31 of 1 person reacted
4. 4Nobody has seen it yet
5. 5800 of 100,000 people reacted

The post with 800 reactions is last: 99,200 of the 100,000 people who saw it did nothing. One reaction from one person decides nothing, because every post starts as if 20 people had seen it and responded as usual.

A post people responded to at least as much as usual is placed higher when its author has fewer than 100 followers. The lift shrinks as the account grows and is gone at 5,000. Being small earns nothing by itself: 10 people must have seen the post, and it must have done well.

A post between 3 and 180 days old that people responded to well can be shown again to someone who has not seen it. Once it has been on your screen it is not brought back.

No more than two posts in a row come from one account, and one account holds at most a tenth of your feed.

Nothing in the ordering reads how long anyone watched, listened, scrolled or stayed. A video counts once per person, when they watch past half. Leaving it playing all day adds nothing.

Everyone sees posts. What you see and do moves a post's rate only while your email address is confirmed, your account is active and at least 24 hours old, and there is no block between you and the author. That keeps throwaway accounts from lifting a post or using up its first audience. Authors never count on their own posts.

Real accounts acting together. Ten confirmed accounts older than a day are ten people to these rules, whoever runs them. They can lift a post, or look at a new post and do nothing, which uses up its first audience. Nothing here detects that. It is for moderation, and suspending an account takes back what it counted.

Accounts made ahead of time. An account registered a week early passes the 24 hour rule.

An app that lies or stays silent. What was on your screen is reported by your browser. A changed app can report a post it never showed. An app that reports nothing is not counted.

Newer posts, posts from accounts you follow and posts that touch an interest you chose are placed higher. A post you were already shown is placed lower.

Friends and Following are not ranked: newest first. Watch, and the episodes to try on Listen, use these same rules.

You are never shown posts from accounts you muted or blocked, posts you marked Not interested, or anything you are not allowed to see.

The order is kept for 30 minutes, so scrolling never repeats or skips a post. If the ranking cannot be reached, For you shows the newest posts and says so.