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Alec MacGillis engagement report

@AlecMacGillis - 80K followers on X

Measured over 13 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on October 10, 2026.

Engagement

Middle of its size range
Per follower
0.123%
of 80K followers
Per impression
0.639%
15K views on a typical post
Reach
19.3%
of its followers see a post
Typical post
98
interactions (median)
Saved
0.13%
20 bookmarks on a typical post
Posting rate
2.27/day
active 20% of days
Peak time
13:00 UTC
Monday

A typical post picks up 98 interactions against 80K followers, an engagement rate of 0.123%. Measured over 13 original posts, its engagement rate beats 52% of 20,444 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 15K times each, and 0.639% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 19.3% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 2.3 posts a day over the last 30 days, though only 20% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 13:00 UTC, and Monday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 13 posts sampled, 54% carry an image or video, 23% are part of a thread and 38% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 3.4K interactions, about 35x its own typical post.

Measured over 13 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on October 10, 2026.

Compared with accounts its own size

Alec MacGillis's engagement rate beats 52% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (20,444 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 6 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 28% 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 0.123%, Alec MacGillis sits above the 25th percentile of the 205,881 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the below the median band, which runs 0.024% to 0.143%.

p100.004%
p250.024%
p50 (median)0.143%
p750.68%
p902.56%
p9982.4%
Engagement rate as a share of followers, across the 205,881 accounts we have scanned enough to measure. The axis is logarithmic, because the top and bottom of this population are about 22,891 times apart and a linear axis would flatten everything below the median into a single point.
Show the percentile table
Engagement rate percentiles
PercentileEngagement rate
10th percentile0.004%
25th percentile0.024%
50th percentile0.143%
75th percentile0.68%
90th percentile2.56%
99th percentile82.4%

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 13:00 UTC, and Monday 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.

Engagement by hour posted, UTCTwenty-four bars, one per UTC hour. Each bar shows how posts published in that hour compare with their own authors' median engagement. Bars above the centre line ran higher than the median, bars below ran lower. A marker flags Busiest hour: 13:00 UTC.
0003060912151821
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 111%Busiest hour: 13:00 UTC
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
Engagement by hour posted, UTC
Hour (UTC)Vs author medianPosts
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 UTC0%116K
22:00 UTC-2%100K
23:00 UTC-1%90K
Engagement by day of weekSeven bars, one per weekday, Sunday first. Each bar shows how posts published on that day compare with their own authors' median engagement. Bars above the centre line ran higher than the median, bars below ran lower. A marker flags Busiest day: Monday.
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 111%Busiest day: Monday
Show engagement by day of week as a table
Engagement by day of week
DayVs author medianPosts
Sunday+5%393K
Monday+1%483K
Tuesday-2%520K
Wednesday-3%472K
Thursday-2%430K
Friday-3%447K
Saturday+2%393K
See what moves engagement across the whole catalogWhat counts as a good engagement rate at this size

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.

This account's posting mix compared with catalog-wide effects
FormatThis accountCatalog effect95% intervalAccounts behind it
Image or video54% of posts+111%+108% to +115%34K
Outbound link38% of posts-41%-42% to -40%32K
Typical length-no effect-2% to -1%42K
  • 54% 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.
  • 38% of its posts carry a link off X. Across the catalog, posts with an outbound link run 41% below the same accounts' other posts.
  • Its average post runs 231 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, 202635x their median

    Probably my favorite one hit wonder from the 90's. "Low" by Cracker https://t.co/KomI2WmCop

    2.8K17532161510K viewsView on X
  • Oct 5, 202627x their median

    Dodgers fans left a 2-run postseason game in the 8th inning en masse https://t.co/jTJLYtV765

    2.4K5015351726K viewsView on X
  • Oct 7, 20265.6x their median

    Just heard from a friend about a woman having a seizure on Capitol Hill. According to the account shared with me, someone called DC 911 (@OUC_DC), called again, got put on hold, and was told an ambulance wasn’t coming. Someone then ran to the Capitol Building to get help. Why should anyone have to run down the street for help after calling 911? We already lost William Ostertag after DC 911 delayed sending paramedics. When will DC fix this? When will @MayorBowser fire Heather McGaffin and demand that the Office of Unified Communications answer calls, dispatch help promptly, and account for its failures? I’m livid. Our community deserves a 911 system we can trust with our lives. @STATter911

    4844414765K viewsView on X
  • Oct 7, 20262.9x their median

    BEZOS: What I'd say about AI, because of the productivity, you're not going to need have to have a two-earner household. You'll have a labor shortage. https://t.co/W43xr8WKgT

    129308537242K viewsView on X
  • Oct 5, 20262.8x their median

    Apart from all the other craziness in this interview in which Rees-Mogg basically does to Tucker what Tucker did to Ted Cruz way back when: These guys are the same age, 57. https://t.co/Cbu6E1WixL

    2171436486K viewsView on X
  • Sep 3, 20262.2x 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

    1722617346K viewsView on X
  • Oct 8, 20262.2x their median

    Interesting to see @JDVance today zeroing in on the charade that I wrote about for @propublica last year, how tech giants run obscure print classified ads for jobs they already have an H-1b visa holder doing, as part of the dysfunctional process to get that worker a green card. https://t.co/uIfp2PJxp1

    160401426.8K viewsView on X
  • Oct 9, 20261.9x their median

    New in Science: we randomized phone-free classrooms for 16,000+ students across 10 institutions in Odisha, India. Students deposited phones in a box at the start of each class, for a full semester. https://t.co/4qRSgMnWxm

    1363291449K viewsView on X
  • Sep 5, 2026

    “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

    113106119K viewsView on X
  • Sep 3, 2026

    Always read the FT letters to the editor, especially the ones at far bottom right. They don't disappoint. https://t.co/E6rYoSYQZT

    8710208.0K viewsView on X

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 98 interactions against 80K followers, an engagement rate of 0.123%. Measured over 13 original posts, its engagement rate beats 52% of 20,444 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 15K times each, and 0.639% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 19.3% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 2.3 posts a day over the last 30 days, though only 20% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 13:00 UTC, and Monday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 13 posts sampled, 54% carry an image or video, 23% are part of a thread and 38% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 3.4K interactions, about 35x its own typical post.

What is Alec MacGillis's engagement rate on X?
Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) has an engagement rate of 0.123%, based on the median interactions across 13 original posts from the last 30 days against 79,600 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
Is that a good engagement rate?
At 0.123%, Alec MacGillis sits above the 25th percentile of the 205,881 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 52% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (20,444 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 13:00 UTC, and Monday is its busiest day, at roughly 2.27 posts per day across the measured window.

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