Algorithm updates

Video and links on X in 2026: the vertical player, Grok watching video, and the link question

X added a video tab in 2025 and an immersive player on February 16, 2026, reads video frames and speech with AI, and says links are no longer penalized.

Updated October 4, 20268 min read10 sources

In short

X has pushed video since it launched a dedicated video tab for US users on January 20, 2025 and an immersive video player on iOS on February 16, 2026. Its published code turns each video into a few sampled frames plus a speech transcript for its AI systems, but on October 4, 2026 it gave a predicted full watch a weight of 0 in ranking. On links, X's product head said on October 19, 2025 that links are not deboosted, and on July 28, 2026 that you no longer need to put links in replies.

On this page

X spent two years turning its feed toward video
What "Grok watches every video" means in the published code
A full watch earns almost nothing directly in the ranking
The link question: what X said, in order
What the code shows about links
Video tools inside X are aimed at original content
How to post a clip on X now
Questions
Sources

X spent two years turning its feed toward video

X is not TikTok, but its product changes since 2025 point the same way. This timeline lists the dated changes that affect how a clip is shown, read and ranked.

Date	Change	Source
January 20, 2025	Dedicated video tab in the bottom bar, rolling out to US users	TechCrunch, quoting X
October 12, 2025	Test of a new way to share web links, aiming for "equal visibility on Timeline"	Nikita Bier on X
October 17, 2025	Musk: Grok will "read every post and watch every video"	Elon Musk on X
October 19, 2025	Bier: "Links are not deboosted. They have lower engagement"	Nikita Bier on X
February 16, 2026	New immersive video player, iOS first	Nikita Bier on X
July 6 to 7, 2026	Built-in video editor and recorder on iOS: captions in several languages, green screen	Engadget
July 28 to 29, 2026	Bier: no need to put links in replies; Musk: no link penalty "for over a year"	PPC Land report
August 25, 2026	Default weight for a predicted quality video view set from 0.05 to 0	X ranking code

The rest of this article explains what the code says about each part, and what it means for a clip post.

What "Grok watches every video" means in the published code

On October 17, 2025, Elon Musk wrote that X aimed to delete "all heuristics" (hand-written ranking rules) within 4 to 6 weeks and that "Grok will literally read every post and watch every video (100M+ per day)". The open code in xai-org/x-algorithm shows what "watch" means in practice for one of these systems.

X's content-understanding system, Grox, builds a numeric summary of each post (an embedding) that other systems use to find and compare posts. In the version 8.2 renderer in the repository, a video goes in as:

Up to 4 frames, labelled in the code as "uniformly sampled", plus the video's duration and quality.
A speech transcript made by automatic speech recognition, cut to 2,000 characters.
The post text, the author's details, and any quoted post or link card.

A second Grox job sends posts with their media to a small vision-language model for an initial screen. Its output fields include a description, tags, topic categories and a field named slop_score. X withholds the prompts for these models. We did not find where the ranking code reads slop_score, so we cannot say what it does.

Our reading for clippers: the system does not watch your clip frame by frame like a person. It sees a few evenly spaced frames and reads what is said. A clip whose meaning is in the speech and visible on screen at several points is easy to classify correctly. A clip that is mostly a static frame or music gives it little to work with.

A full watch earns almost nothing directly in the ranking

The ranking weights, read on October 4, 2026 in home-mixer/params/param.rs, treat video signals as small:

Predicted action	Weight on October 4, 2026	Note
Video quality view	0	Was 0.05 until the August 25, 2026 commit; only videos longer than 10 seconds can earn it
Video open	0.07	Opening the player
Dwell	0.05	Stopping on the post
Click dwell time	0.4	Time spent after opening the post; raised from 0 on September 29, 2026
Share via copy link	20	The largest positive weight, for comparison
Reply / quote / DM share	5 each	For comparison

Our reading: X's ranking pays for what a video makes people do next, mainly share, reply and follow, more than for the watch itself. Time spent still counts through the dwell weights. The full table and how weights work are in what X's ranking weights reward.

The code also has a filter that removes video posts when a feed request excludes video, and the immersive video surface has its own list of visibility rules. So a clip can appear in the main For You feed and in the immersive video feed under different filters. The repository does not publish separate weights for the video feed.

The link question: what X said, in order

For years, creators put links in the first reply instead of the post, on the belief that X cut the reach of posts with links. X's statements since October 2025 say this is no longer needed:

October 12, 2025: Bier announced a test of a new way to share and engage with web links. The goal: "to ensure all content on the platform has equal visibility on Timeline."
October 19, 2025: Bier replied to a user: "Links are not deboosted. They have lower engagement and we are trying to fix that."
July 28, 2026: PPC Land reported that Bier told Mark Zuckerberg, "you do not need to put the links in replies anymore". The next day, asked whether X still penalized posts with links, Musk answered: "We haven't for over a year." We could not open these two posts directly, so they rest on PPC Land's report.

Bier's October 2025 wording is the important part. There is no penalty, but link posts get less engagement. In a system that ranks on predicted engagement, lower engagement means lower scores. The effect can look like a penalty without being one.

What the code shows about links

We searched the published scoring code for a link penalty on October 4, 2026 and did not find one. Three link-related items do exist:

Open link has a weight of 0.2. A predicted link tap adds a little to the score. It is smaller than a click into the post (0.3) and far smaller than a share.
Malicious links are labelled. The MALICIOUS_URL label hides a post from recommendations to non-followers. X's Under the Hood report lists it. See X's account labels.
Link presence is a feature in an experiment. The code prepares content features for each post, including whether it has a link, whether it has video and the video length, and can send them to the reranker as "debias" inputs. The switch for this is off by default, and the repository does not show what the reranker does with them.

Our reading: links cost you through behaviour, not through a rule. A viewer who taps a link leaves X, so that viewer is less likely to reply or share. For a clip post, a link also competes with the clip for the viewer's attention.

Video tools inside X are aimed at original content

On July 7, 2026, Engadget reported that the X app for iOS had a built-in video editor and recorder with overlay captions in several languages and a green screen. Engadget quoted Bier: the goal is to "give creators the tools to create original content & reward those creators".

The timing matters. The editor came between X's May 2026 move to reassign the impressions of reuploads and the July 16 report of faster duplicate detection. Our reading: the green screen fits a commentary format, with you on screen in front of the source moment. Under X's Original Content Rewards rules, commentary that adds real value can count as original; a plain reupload cannot. See reupload detection on X.

X's own video length and file size limits, with and without Premium, are in Can clippers earn on X?.

How to post a clip on X now

Upload the video natively, in vertical format. X built its video tab as a vertical video feed. Reformatting help is in vertical video format.
Make the speech carry the point. X's systems read a transcript and four frames, so a clip whose words name the topic early is easier to classify and match to the right viewers. For caption styles, see captions for clips.
Run longer than 10 seconds if the moment allows. Only videos over 10 seconds can earn the quality-view signal. Its weight is 0 today, but it was 0.05 in August and can return.
Write post text that invites a reply or a send. Shares, replies and quotes carry the weight. A view alone carries little.
Put a link in the post only if the campaign requires it. X says there is no link penalty, so you do not need the reply trick. But a link pulls attention away from the clip. If the brief asks for a link, put it in the post where the campaign can verify it.
Never link to doubtful sites. One MALICIOUS_URL label hides the post from non-followers.
Add something of your own. Use the green screen or a quote post for commentary. A reposted clip with only a caption is a reupload in X's terms.

Questions

Does X still penalize posts with links in 2026?

X says no. Nikita Bier said on October 19, 2025 that links are not deboosted but get lower engagement, and PPC Land reported that Musk said on July 29, 2026 that X had not penalized link posts for over a year. We found no link penalty in the published scoring code on October 4, 2026.

Should I put the link in the first reply instead of the post?

X's product head said on July 28, 2026 that this is no longer needed, according to PPC Land. If a campaign checks the link, keep it in the post itself so the campaign can verify it.

Does Grok actually watch my whole video?

Not frame by frame in the code we read. One Grox embedding job uses up to 4 evenly spaced frames and a speech transcript of up to 2,000 characters, along with the post text. Other systems may use more; the prompts and some rules are not published.

Is there a separate algorithm for X's video tab?

The published code has a separate list of visibility rules for the immersive video surface and a filter for video-only requests. It does not publish separate ranking weights for the video tab.

Does a longer clip rank better on X?

Not by itself. The quality-view signal only applies to videos over 10 seconds, and its weight is 0 as of October 4, 2026. Time-spent signals count, so a longer clip helps only if people keep watching.

Did X confirm that the immersive player is on Android?

Bier's February 16, 2026 post said the new player was available on iOS that day. We did not find a dated statement for Android.

Sources

We checked every claim on this page against these sources on the date above. Platform rules and rates change often. Found an error? Tell us.