I won't go into a ton of specifics as to how the new algorithm works, but there should now be a shorter feedback loop between when you make a popular post and when it shows up on the homepage (assuming it makes it to the homepage).
Getting early upvotes will also be more impactful than it was in the past. This means three things:
- If you want the homepage to be good, you can and should contribute by visiting /newest or your favorite group and upvoting the posts you want to see on the homepage. Generally, it's a shame that more people don't make use of the upvote feature, but going forward those who do will have more control over the site.
- If you want your posts to succeed, you should think more about getting upvotes. That means making posts that are useful to everyone, giving them readable titles, tweeting about them, etc.
- I'll do more to police cheating. If you're making a bunch of fake accounts to vote or doing other things to clearly game the system, I'll probably shadow ban you, meaning you'll be banned and you won't even know it. This is something I've already been doing manually already, but the code to do this automatically will be improving.
Over and out!