The Hacker News engagement report
@TheHackersNews - 2.5M followers on X
Measured over 308 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on October 31, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 148 interactions against 2.5M followers, an engagement rate of 0.006%. Posts are seen about 27K times each, and 0.554% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 1.08% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 11.9 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on almost every day in the window. Most posts go out around 12:00 UTC, and Wednesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 308 posts sampled, 60% carry an image or video and 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 2.5K interactions, about 17x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #threatsday, #cybersecurity, #php2shell.
Measured over 308 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on October 31, 2026. Recurring tags: #threatsday, #cybersecurity, #php2shell.
Where this sits in the catalog
At 0.006%, The Hacker News sits above the 10th percentile of the 217,745 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.025%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.004% |
| 25th percentile | 0.025% |
| 50th percentile | 0.149% |
| 75th percentile | 0.704% |
| 90th percentile | 2.63% |
| 99th percentile | 82.5% |
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 12:00 UTC, and Wednesday 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 | 60% of posts | +111% | +108% to +115% | 34K |
| Outbound link | 100% of posts | -41% | -42% to -40% | 32K |
| Typical length | - | +15% | +14% to +16% | 32K |
- 60% 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.
- 100% 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 310 characters, which falls in the over 280 characters band. Across the catalog, posts over 280 characters run 15% above the same accounts' other posts.
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
- Oct 23, 202617x their median
🛑 ALERT - Node2Shell RCE exploit works on an official Node.js build. Researchers demonstrated how crafted Brotli data can trigger code execution through vulnerable Node.js applications, without modifying the runtime. Here's how the exploit works: https://t.co/ffJvHDqRXj https://t.co/sLH83S7p9r
- Oct 21, 202616x their median
‼️ BREAKING - PHP releases emergency patches for two critical #PHP2Shell RCE flaws (CVSS 9.2) as early exploit attempts emerge. The flaws can enable unauthenticated code execution and expose server memory. 👉 PATCH NOW (CVE-2026-109618, CVE-2026-109619) Details ➜ https://t.co/jJT7p6lala
- Oct 23, 202613x their median
🚨 Hackers breached enterprise firewalls and VPNs worldwide in a campaign linked to k0t. Over 70,000 exposed credentials identified. Fortinet and Palo Alto devices targeted. Persistent access established. Data exfiltrated. Inside the attack chain and suspected ransomware links: https://t.co/j7v6zQ4ZTj
- Oct 25, 202611x their median
🚨 PHP2Shell attackers accessed MFA secrets and password hashes at a European government entity in just 2 hours. That's not all. → Signs of agentic AI use in post-exploitation activity → Suspected Lazarus-linked operators scanning 216 targets worldwide Full details ↓ https://t.co/oz42LO1zla
- Oct 22, 202611x their median
‼️ALERT - Two new unpatched CVSS 9.0 RCE flaws in #Linux's KSMBD SMB server were disclosed on public kernel mailing lists before fixes were ready. One can be triggered WITHOUT authentication. Neither has a mainline kernel fix. Details here ↓ https://t.co/0MIHpvkPIQ
- Oct 27, 20269.4x their median
‼️ UPDATE - Tailscale confirms the Tailworm SSH flaws are real. Its new investigation page says most of what it found is privilege escalation and calls the issues “serious.” Fix targeted within 24 hours — no CVE or patched version out yet. Mitigate now: → Set TS_SSH_DISABLE_FORWARDING=1 in the tailscaled service and restart → Tighten SSH access rules to the users/devices that need them Read: https://t.co/0wcJTvDoxV
- Oct 21, 20269.0x their median
🛑 Attackers hijacked over 300 Tor exit relays to intercept SSH connections and steal login passwords. A researcher found 333 exits redirecting SSH traffic to 12 interception servers. The Tor Project has since blocked the affected relays. Here's how the attack worked: https://t.co/eJsVNeh5xA
- Oct 19, 20268.7x their median
🚨 An unpatched Broadcom Wi-Fi flaw lets attackers within radio range execute code as ROOT on affected routers, without a Wi-Fi password or pairing. Researcher demonstrated password extraction and a remote shell. Potentially impacting millions of routers. Read - https://t.co/bm22ftXx1u
- Sep 1, 20268.6x their median
🚨 Attackers stole a METR API key and used it for three weeks, consuming credits worth about $600,000. A fail-open bug disabled Google authentication on a public agent dashboard. The attacker prompted an agent to reveal the key and added SSH persistence. How the exposed app was abused: https://t.co/5LB42Ho5z7
- Aug 20, 20268.5x their median
‼️ Warning - Expired Visa payment cards can be revived for real purchases. New “Zombie Card” attack rewrites the expiry date a contactless terminal reads over NFC, while the card’s cryptography still validates. See how it works - https://t.co/PCqmL8OKma
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.
Recurring topics
The most frequent hashtags in the sampled posts. They describe what this account writes about; they are not a performance signal, and the catalog-wide breakdown on the hub shows how little hashtag count moves.
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Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 148 interactions against 2.5M followers, an engagement rate of 0.006%. Posts are seen about 27K times each, and 0.554% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 1.08% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 11.9 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on almost every day in the window. Most posts go out around 12:00 UTC, and Wednesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 308 posts sampled, 60% carry an image or video and 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 2.5K interactions, about 17x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #threatsday, #cybersecurity, #php2shell.
- What is The Hacker News's engagement rate on X?
- The Hacker News (@TheHackersNews) has an engagement rate of 0.006%, based on the median interactions across 308 original posts from the last 30 days against 2,464,362 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.006%, The Hacker News sits above the 10th percentile of the 217,745 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 @TheHackersNews have real engagement?
- There is not yet enough sample to rank this account against others of its size.
- When does @TheHackersNews post?
- Most posts go out around 12:00 UTC, and Wednesday is its busiest day, at roughly 11.93 posts per day across the measured window.