X wants to turn your replies into less of a 'battleground'

X is rolling out a small but notable change to how it surfaces content from people users follow back, according to a post from the platform's head of product, Nikita Bier.

In a message published Monday, Bier said the company identified a gap in how the algorithm weighted relationships between users. "We're rolling out a small tweak to boost visibility of your posts to your mutuals (people who you follow back)," Bier wrote.

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He explained that the platform had discovered this "mutuals" data was missing from the algorithm, which had the effect of making friends "appear less" in a user's replies. As Bier put it, that gap "resulted in the reply section feeling more like a battleground with people you don't recognize." He added that the change should also help "clusters form around interests more easily, which many people have asked for."

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The update is the latest in a string of product changes X has made to its recommendation systems and features this year. In April, the platform rolled out a Grok-powered custom timelines feature, allowing Premium subscribers to pin feeds built around specific topics, a change Bier had also announced personally, describing it at the time as a feature that could help users "dive deep into your favorite niche on X," as previously reported by Mashable.

That rollout drew a mixed but largely curious reaction from users, some of whom raised concerns about repetitive content or overlapping topic categories.

The mutuals update also arrives against the backdrop of ongoing scrutiny of X's broader platform safety record.

GLAAD's most recent Social Media Safety Index, published in May, ranked X as the lowest-scoring major platform for LGBTQ+ user safety among the six services it evaluated, giving the company just 29 out of 100 points, according to Mashable's coverage of the report. GLAAD's report found the platform landscape overall to be "rife with anti-LGBTQ hate, harassment, and disinformation," though X's score remained the lowest of any platform assessed.

Whether surfacing more content from mutual connections will meaningfully shift the tenor of the platform's replies remains to be seen, but the change signals X's continued effort to fine-tune how relationships factor into what users see on the app.