Alec MacGillis engagement report
@AlecMacGillis - 80K followers on X
Measured over 15 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 7, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 35 interactions against 80K followers, an engagement rate of 0.044%. Measured over 15 original posts, its engagement rate beats 35% of 6,874 tracked accounts of a similar size, which puts it in the middle of its size range rather than at either end. Posts are seen about 2.8K times each, and 1.24% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 3.56% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 1.4 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 17% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 14:00 UTC, and Thursday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 15 posts sampled, 33% carry an image or video and 67% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 3.4K interactions, about 97x its own typical post.
Measured over 15 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 7, 2026.
Compared with accounts its own size
Alec MacGillis's engagement rate beats 35% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (6,874 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 4 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.
On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 47% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.
Where this sits in the catalog
At 0.044%, Alec MacGillis sits above the 25th percentile of the 66,691 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the below the median band, which runs 0.016% to 0.1%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.002% |
| 25th percentile | 0.016% |
| 50th percentile | 0.1% |
| 75th percentile | 0.499% |
| 90th percentile | 2.09% |
| 99th percentile | 118.6% |
This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built
Posting timing
This account posts most often around 14:00 UTC, and Thursday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
| Hour (UTC) | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC | -1% | 89K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 90K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 88K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 94K |
| 04:00 UTC | -5% | 76K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 75K |
| 06:00 UTC | -5% | 86K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 93K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 108K |
| 09:00 UTC | -4% | 124K |
| 10:00 UTC | -3% | 129K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 141K |
| 12:00 UTC | -3% | 154K |
| 13:00 UTC | -3% | 167K |
| 14:00 UTC | -4% | 173K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 176K |
| 16:00 UTC | -3% | 171K |
| 17:00 UTC | -3% | 159K |
| 18:00 UTC | -2% | 149K |
| 19:00 UTC | -2% | 141K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 131K |
| 21:00 UTC | 0% | 116K |
| 22:00 UTC | -2% | 100K |
| 23:00 UTC | -1% | 90K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +5% | 393K |
| Monday | +1% | 483K |
| Tuesday | -2% | 520K |
| Wednesday | -3% | 472K |
| Thursday | -2% | 430K |
| Friday | -3% | 447K |
| Saturday | +2% | 393K |
Formats this account uses
Its own posting mix on the left, and what each of those formats does across every account we track on the right. Only formats where the effect clears our publish test appear here, so an empty row is a format we could not measure rather than one that does nothing.
| Format | This account | Catalog effect | 95% interval | Accounts behind it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image or video | 33% of posts | +111% | +108% to +115% | 34K |
| Outbound link | 67% of posts | -41% | -42% to -40% | 32K |
| Typical length | - | no effect | -2% to -1% | 42K |
- 33% of this account's sampled posts carry an image or video. Across the catalog, posts with an image or video run 111% above the same accounts' other posts.
- 67% of its posts carry a link off X. Across the catalog, posts with an outbound link run 41% below the same accounts' other posts, so a large share of this account's output sits in the weakest bucket we measure.
- Its average post runs 223 characters, which falls in the 180 - 280 characters band. Across the catalog, posts of 180 to 280 characters match the same accounts' other posts almost exactly.
These are catalog-wide differences applied to this account's own posting mix, not a measurement of how each format performs for this account specifically. We keep one median per account, not one per format per account, so the second thing is not something this data can tell you.
Best tweets
- Sep 4, 202697x their median
Probably my favorite one hit wonder from the 90's. "Low" by Cracker https://t.co/KomI2WmCop
- Sep 3, 20266.2x their median
153 people signed the much-needed Harper's Letter on Justice and Open Debate. Six are now dead. Todd Gitlin, Drucilla Cornell, Martin Amis, Khaled Khalifa, Helen Vendler, and now... Rest in peace, Gloria Steinem. You done good. https://t.co/veX8wHG7Vn
- Sep 5, 20263.7x their median
“It’s absurd we live in societies that take people btwn 18-22, when they're most physically capable of contributing to our nations and tell them, ‘Go away for 4 yrs, read & learn & have conversations.' I want students to be aware what an incredible privilege that is.” https://t.co/1Awn5tHpde
- Sep 3, 20262.8x their median
Always read the FT letters to the editor, especially the ones at far bottom right. They don't disappoint. https://t.co/E6rYoSYQZT
- Sep 4, 20261.5x their median
"Steinem recalled a taxi conversation between Gay Talese and Saul Bellow, in which Talese remarked in her presence, 'You know how every year there’s a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year’s pretty girl.'" https://t.co/vQqEXVO3Cf
- Sep 3, 2026
"New York is even more unequal today than it was before the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report by the city’s comptroller...Almost two-thirds of the city’s inflation-adjusted income growth went to the top 1 % of earners between 2019 and 2024." https://t.co/wXhIKYnffq
- Sep 5, 2026
"Almost every teen girl Businessweek interviewed for this article said she knew peers taking GLP-1s with no clear medical need, some experimenting with leftovers taken from friends...Some saw the drugs as a cheat code to avoid exercise or healthy eating." https://t.co/H9SsJbYAxq
- Sep 3, 2026
Quite a quote: coming home “made a permanent connection between me and my native place and with its landscape. The landscape was there to check me if I was wrong. I could never go away and make up stuff at cocktail parties about the backwoods of Kentucky." https://t.co/H8rb9WqYoq
- Sep 6, 2026
Just received two emails in *very* close succession from the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch: https://t.co/iSxulCDOuT
- Sep 3, 2026
One for the annals: https://t.co/uFS43qjET9
Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.
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Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 35 interactions against 80K followers, an engagement rate of 0.044%. Measured over 15 original posts, its engagement rate beats 35% of 6,874 tracked accounts of a similar size, which puts it in the middle of its size range rather than at either end. Posts are seen about 2.8K times each, and 1.24% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 3.56% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 1.4 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 17% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 14:00 UTC, and Thursday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 15 posts sampled, 33% carry an image or video and 67% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 3.4K interactions, about 97x its own typical post.
- What is Alec MacGillis's engagement rate on X?
- Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) has an engagement rate of 0.044%, based on the median interactions across 15 original posts from the last 30 days against 79,710 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.044%, Alec MacGillis sits above the 25th percentile of the 66,691 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
- Does @AlecMacGillis have real engagement?
- Its engagement rate beats 35% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (6,874 accounts), which puts it in the middle of its size range group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
- When does @AlecMacGillis post?
- Most posts go out around 14:00 UTC, and Thursday is its busiest day, at roughly 1.4 posts per day across the measured window.