X, formerly known as Twitter, now sorts posts by like counts as opposed to the order in which they were posted when users are logged out. Posts, formerly called tweets, still appear in chronological order on profiles when you’re logged into the social network, but once you log out, they are sorted by performance.
The change was first spotted by 9to5Google.
The platform is sorting posts based on likes, and not views, since posts that have more views but a lower like count are showing up lower in feeds. The change is definitely a strange one, especially since your most-liked posts could be from years ago. The new sorting method buries new and recent posts in favor of popular ones.
Our tests show that even if you have a pinned post, it won’t appear at the top of your profile feed when logged out, which defeats the point of a pinned post.
It’s unknown why X decided to make this change, but it’s possible that the company believes that if logged out users come across your most popular posts first, they may be more inclined to follow you or sign up for the service.
X has made numerous changes ever since Elon Musk took the reins of the company last year. Earlier this morning, the social network made X Pro — which was previously known as TweetDeck — a subscriber-only product. The move doesn’t come as a surprise, as the company said in June that TweetDeck would soon only be accessible to verified users.
