The algorithm
See how your feed is ranked. Then change it.
Every incumbent feed is a black box tuned to hold your attention. Surf hands you the exact dials the ranker uses. Move one, and your feed answers to you.
Every ranking weight, in your hands.
Three balance sliders set what your feed optimizes for: conversation over likes, timeless best over just-posted, hidden gems over trending. They move the real coefficients, a reply is worth 7.0, a repost 5.0, a like 0.5. Not a see-less toggle.
What counts most
How recent
Popularity
Steer the feel, not just the topic.
Seven more sliders shape the character of what you see: sentiment, depth, controversy, political lean, substance, novelty, and how far to explore. Each is graded by how far you push it, so nudging is gentle and pushing is decisive.
Describe it, and the sliders move.
Type something like “less negativity, more from people i know.” It maps to the same public knobs you could set by hand, and lands as a rule you can see and switch off. Keep up to 12 standing rules at once.
Describe your feed
Watch it reshuffle before you save.
A preview reruns the genuine production ranker on your unsaved settings, so the feed reorders in front of you. Nothing is guessed. Safety filters can never be relaxed this way, and any slider you set always beats the model.
Every post tells you why.
Tap any post for the honest reason it reached you, drawn straight from the ranking query, with no extra tracking or AI call. Disagree, and one tap sends that kind of post down, weighted the strongest of any signal.
rest days are training days. say it with me.
Why am I seeing this?
Gaining traction right now, from a topic you lean into.
No black box
The scoring, published.
This is the real formula, the same code that ranks every feed on Surf. Every ranked feed pulls roughly 2,200 candidates: the most popular, the closest matches to what you like, and picks from people with taste like yours. Then it scores each one by the weights below.
How your feed is scored
Retrieval, three ways
1,500 by weighted popularity, 400 nearest your interests by vector search, and 300 from people with similar taste. Accounts you follow are pinned in.
About 35 signals, scored
Replies, reposts, quotes, dwell time, shares, and your own history all feed the score, each with a published weight.
Diversity, on purpose
After your top few posts from one author, the rest are dampened, so no single account can flood your feed.
One honest caveat
Paid accounts get a reach multiplier, 1.5x to 4x. It is a perk, and it is the only thumb on the scale. Safety filters and your own settings are never for sale.
Everyone, your follows, or people you know.
Set the scope of your whole feed in one tap. People you know is an inner circle built from who you actually talk to, not who you followed once and forgot.
Who fills your feed
Not feeling ranked? Turn it off.
One switch drops you into a pure, newest-first feed. No ranking, no inference, just the people you follow in the order they posted. Your comfort filters still hold. Turn it back on whenever you want.
The reasons, in plain words.
Every post carries one of these, and you can act on any of them.
You follow them
The people you chose come first, never buried.
Someone you know
A friend in your inner circle liked or replied.
A topic you like
It matches a subject you lean into.
Similar to your taste
Close to things you have engaged with before.
Climbing right now
Gaining real traction in the last few hours.
Broadening your feed
A deliberate step outside your usual circle.
A feed you control is a feed that respects you.
You choose the algorithm. You choose what you see. You choose what gets your time.