(Austin, Texas) Trying to keep up with Elon Musk is like running a relay race with no end. Today he advised top officials in Washington DC at the AI Insight forum while yesterday he spoke at the All-In Summit.

This blog post is about X and How the algorithm rewards creators who post long content that engages people.

Elon at All-In Summit

Elon explained how the algorithm flows to support creators who post longform articles as well as creators who post longer videos.

If you think about it, it’s very logical. When a short post is looked at and scrolled past quickly on X, it does not account for much time spent, so naturally it will not be something that contributes to many unregrettable user minutes. It may occupy two seconds of a person’s time, but no more. The impact it will have will be low. If I scroll constantly on X, I may regret it because I am not pausing to read an informative article or watch a finely crafted video.

When I paused to watch the hour long podcast on X with Lex Friedman and Walter Isaacson, I walked away enriched and enlightened and feeling great. This is a wonderful example of unregretted time spent on X. If that’s the only thing someone did that day on the app, I think they will be quite happy because there’s so much new information to be learned from Lex Friedman’s podcast. Therefore, that material or rather, that video will be algorithmically promoted more on the app than a three second video.

Optimizing User Time On X

This is how Elon explained it on All-In,

“We are trying to optimize for user time on the platform, what it naturally means, is that posting content that somebody looks at longer is going to get higher priority than content that is short. This is because the system is aspiring to maximize on regretted user minutes. So, if we’re succeeding, you want to spend more time on the platform and after having spent that time, you don’t want to regret it.”

Elon explained that he would like people to spend time on X in order to both learn new things and to be entertained, rather than spend time that is later regretted. In contrast, people say they regret excessive time spent on TikTok. X should aspire to be different.

He went on to explain that

“When you are optimizing for unregretted user minutes, the more content you post on the platform, the more reach that thing will get, because the system is seeing the users spending more time on the platform, because they’re seeing that you’re watching a long podcast or reading a longform article, or watching some video. That’s going to take a lot more time than, say, if you link to a video elsewhere, or link to an article elsewhere. That means you spent less time on the platform, so the system will not exclude it, but will give it less attention.”

Elon also emphasized that the algorithm that does this will be Open Source. Anybody should be able to recreate the same results using the algorithm that they see being created on the X app.

This kind of transparency generates trust and allows users to not only understand how the X app works, but it builds curiosity into the process. Some of the finest computer engineers are working on these algorithms, and being able to see their work, nicely presented, and cleaned up for the public, is a fantastic education in algorithmic programming.

While Elon was in Washingotn DC, I stayed grounded in Austin and we had rain and cool weather for the first time in months! We’re finally reaching the end of a scorching hot summer. I’m celebrating the cooler weather by writing, my favorite pastime! I am looking forward to September 23, the first day of Fall. Our Texas Summer has outdid itself this year on the heat scale and there’s something really alluring about pumpkin pies and cozy jackets right now, bring on the cold weather!

^{Article by Gail Alfar, please credit accordingly. Gail writes on X independently, she also writes for WhatsUpX , WhatsUpTesla and Xcelerate.}