@ZhanweiC: After X updates translation feature, Chinese creator community may face extinction, most content creators/industries relying on Chinese content creation are about to collapse. I don't know if you noticed, but currently the daily top post on XHUNT in the Chinese region only has 160k views. I've looked at many KOLs' content, their traffic has dropped sharply, the only ones not dropping are US stock bloggers.…

After X updated its translation feature, the Chinese creator community may face extinction, and most content creators/industries relying on Chinese-language content creation are on the verge of collapse.

Have you noticed that currently, the top post on the Chinese XHUNT daily chart only has 160k views? I’ve looked at many KOLs’ content, and their traffic has plummeted. The only ones that haven’t dropped are those posting about US stocks.

Greta (@Greta0086) has posted about this: Twitter only pushes content from foreign regions to Chinese users, but does not push Chinese-region content to foreigners.

This might be a characteristic of English vs. non-English regions, rather than foreign vs. Chinese regions. I asked Grok about this.

Question: Why does content from the English region get pushed to Chinese-region users, but Chinese-region content does not get pushed to users in other regions?

Answer:

English is the platform’s dominant global language, and the algorithm prioritizes highly engaging content

• X’s “For You” recommendations are based on engagement (likes, replies, retweets, dwell time), semantic relevance, and user history. English content reaches hundreds of millions of users globally (English users far outnumber Chinese users). High-quality English posts more easily accumulate early engagement and are algorithmically amplified to users of any language, including the Chinese region.
• Chinese content is mainly limited to Chinese users (active Chinese users on X are far fewer than English users, possibly less than 2-5% of the total). The early engagement pool is small, making it hard for the algorithm to push it further.

Asymmetry in translation and language detection

• X recently launched Grok-powered automatic translation that translates English (and other language) posts into Chinese for users with a Chinese interface, so you easily see content from the “English region.”
• On the other hand, for non-Chinese users viewing Chinese posts:
  • Translation may not be enabled by default, or its quality/priority is lower.
  • The algorithm does not strongly promote “translated” Chinese content by default (due to lack of early engagement signals).
• The result is one-way visibility: Chinese users can easily see global (especially English) content, but global users have difficulty seeing native Chinese content.

User behavior and settings reinforce this preference

• Many Chinese users have their interface set to Chinese or mix scrolling, which marks them as “preferring multilingual/translated content.”
• English users rarely see Chinese posts unless they actively set “content language” to include Chinese.
• The internet environment in mainland China means many Chinese users on X are overseas or using VPN, and they are more active in cross-language interactions, further boosting English content exposure.

Historical and scale factors

• English content accounts for a very high proportion of global online content (historically over 50%), while Chinese content accounts for a very low share (about 1-2%). X’s algorithm inherits this global trend, tending to distribute “high-value/high-traffic” content (mostly in English) to everyone to boost overall retention. Chinese-region content has a small volume on X and is easily treated as “localized.”