Michael Shellenberger engagement report
@shellenberger - 1.4M followers on X
Measured over 28 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 1, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 5.7K interactions against 1.4M followers, an engagement rate of 0.404%. Measured over 28 original posts, its engagement rate beats 91% of 3,739 tracked accounts of a similar size. Comparing inside a size band matters here: engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly just re-measure the follower count. Posts are seen about 115K times each, and 4.95% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 8.17% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 4 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on roughly 77% of days. Most posts go out around 15:00 UTC, and Tuesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 28 posts sampled, 93% carry an image or video, 46% are part of a thread and 14% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 103K interactions, about 18x its own typical post.
Measured over 28 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 1, 2026.
Compared with accounts its own size
Michael Shellenberger's engagement rate beats 91% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,739 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 9 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 91% 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 0.404%, Michael Shellenberger sits above the 50th percentile of the 36,378 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the above the median band, which runs 0.08% to 0.432%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.002% |
| 25th percentile | 0.012% |
| 50th percentile | 0.08% |
| 75th percentile | 0.432% |
| 90th percentile | 2.10% |
| 99th percentile | 161.0% |
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 15:00 UTC, and Tuesday 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% | 50K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 51K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 50K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 53K |
| 04:00 UTC | -6% | 43K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 42K |
| 06:00 UTC | -4% | 48K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 52K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 60K |
| 09:00 UTC | -3% | 69K |
| 10:00 UTC | -2% | 72K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 78K |
| 12:00 UTC | -2% | 86K |
| 13:00 UTC | -2% | 94K |
| 14:00 UTC | -4% | 97K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 100K |
| 16:00 UTC | -3% | 97K |
| 17:00 UTC | -2% | 90K |
| 18:00 UTC | -1% | 84K |
| 19:00 UTC | -2% | 79K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 74K |
| 21:00 UTC | -1% | 66K |
| 22:00 UTC | -2% | 57K |
| 23:00 UTC | -2% | 51K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +4% | 230K |
| Monday | 0% | 286K |
| Tuesday | -2% | 276K |
| Wednesday | -1% | 251K |
| Thursday | -1% | 244K |
| Friday | -3% | 252K |
| Saturday | +3% | 227K |
Best tweets
- Apr 3, 202418x their median
TWITTER FILES - BRAZIL Brazil is engaged in a sweeping crackdown on free speech led by a Supreme Court justice named Alexandre de Moraes. De Moraes has thrown people in jail without trial for things they posted on social media. He has demanded the removal of users from social media platforms. And he has required the censorship of specific posts, without giving users any right of appeal or even the right to see the evidence presented against them. Now, Twitter Files, released here for the first time, reveal that de Moraes and the Superior Electoral Court he controls engaged in a clear attempt to undermine democracy in Brazil. They: — illegally demanded that Twitter reveal personal details about Twitter users who used hashtags he did not like; — demanded access to Twitter’s internal data, in violation of Twitter policy; — sought to censor, unilaterally, Twitter posts by sitting members of Brazil’s Congress; — sought to weaponize Twitter’s content moderation policies against supporters of then-president @jairbolsonaro The Files show: the origins of the Brazilian judiciary’s demand for sweeping censorship powers; the court’s use of censorship for anti-democratic election interference; and the birth of the Censorship Industrial Complex in Brazil. TWITTER FILES - BRAZIL was written by @david_agape_ @elivieira & @shellenberger We presented these findings to de Moraes, to the Supreme Court (STF), and to the High Electoral Court (TSE). None responded. Let’s get into it...
- Apr 1, 202512x their median
BREAKING: FBI Imposed “Gag Order” About Hunter Biden Laptop After Employee Accidentally Confirmed Its Authenticity To Twitter Newly released internal FBI chat messages reveal senior bureau officials actively shutting down discussion of the laptop’s credibility days before the 2020 Presidential election This is a CatherineHerridgeReports @C__Herridge / Public @Shellenberger Joint Investigation An FBI official admitted to House investigators that an FBI employee had inadvertently confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop to Twitter on a conference call the morning of October 14, 2020, the day the New York Post published a story about it. “I recall that when the question came up, an intelligence analyst assigned to the Criminal Investigative Division said something to the effect of, ‘Yes, the laptop is real’,” the then Russia unit chief testified in a closed door transcribed interview. “I believe it was an (Office of General Counsel) attorney assigned to the (Foreign Influence Task Force) stepped in and said, ‘We will not comment further on this topic.’” For the first time, and with a change of administration, the FBI has now turned over to GOP House investigators the internal chat messages that show Bureau leadership actively silenced its employees. The FBI, which had a special task force to counter foreign election interference, could have set the record straight by confirming the laptop was real and the subject of an ongoing criminal probe. Instead, FBI leadership allowed the false narrative about the laptop to gain momentum. The FBI provided the chat messages to congressional investigators with heavy redactions. Some of the redactions on the chats are marked “OGC AGC,” which appears to mean that they were made by the FBI’s Office of General Counsel and Associate General Counsel. An individual whose name is blacked out, tells Elvis M. Chan, the San Francisco-based FBI special agent tasked with interacting with social media companies, there was a “gag order” on discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In a separate exchange, Chan is told “official response no commen(t).” In the chat, the FBI officials showed awareness that the laptop may have contained evidence of criminal activity. Asked Chan, “actually what kind of case is the laptop thing? corruption? campaign financing?” Another FBI employee responds, “CLOSE HOLD —” after which the response is redacted. To which Chan responds, “oh crap” appearing to underscore the serious nature of the probe, which included felony tax charges. Chan adds, “ok. It ends here”. In the same conversation, Chan is asked if “Anyone discussing that NYPost article on the Biden’s?” Chan responds, “yes we are. c d confirmed an active investigation. No further comment.” “C D” is likely shorthand for the FBI’s Criminal Division. Said another FBI employee, whose name was redacted by the Bureau, “please do not discuss biden matter.” We asked for a response from the bureau and the FBI employees identified in the chat messages. An FBI spokesman declined to comment. We go in-depth on the chat messages for subscribers!
- Aug 4, 20269.9x their median
Journalists are aggressively defending Fauci, despite his diaries showing that he repeatedly lied to the public. The reason is that, after years of dehumanizing Covid dissidents based on his lies, media elites can’t cope with the enormity of their failure. By @GalexyBrane https://t.co/pvjqzQd2X2
- Jun 5, 20247.8x their median
Rep. Dan Goldman claimed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was manipulated by Rudy Giuliani and Russia. Today in Federal court, The FBI witness tells Hunter Biden's jury that NO TAMPERING occurred with his laptop. Share this video far and wide. https://t.co/8WqFBau5MF
- Aug 19, 20265.6x their median
I just dropped my son off at @UCBerkeley housing and as we were approaching we saw this behind his apartments. Shame on @CityofBerkeley @CityofAlbanyCA @UCBerkeleyNews https://t.co/sxyhkez5l4
- Aug 25, 20264.4x their median
Republicans radicalized and Democrats stayed the same, insisted the media repeatedly over the last 10 years. In truth, the opposite happened. The data is now overwhelming that it was the Left, not the Right, that grew more extreme. https://t.co/UvZeTg5moN
- Apr 1, 20253.3x their median
One FBI employee involved in the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop was Bradley Benavides (ctr-intel div). Weeks earlier he played key role in an apparent FBI scheme to smear @SenRonJohnson & @ChuckGrassley — who were investigating Hunter — as tools of Putin. Sinister.
- Aug 31, 20262.7x their median
Climate change caused Nepal's deadly flooding, say the media. It's nonsense. In truth, climate activists diverted billions in USAID and UN climate funding from low-cost flood death prevention, mostly sensors and sirens, proven to save lives, into woke green ESG nonsense. https://t.co/I4SWDTlvmC
- Jul 31, 20262.5x their median
Spain's @sanchezcastejon says the migrant crisis that's left 57 dead isn't his fault. But the day before it, he defended mass amnesty, saying, “Spain has never moved forward by building walls.” Practically everything he's said about mass migration, including for GDP, is false. https://t.co/FWsshXD6S9
- Aug 13, 20262.5x their median
We've known since 2023 that the FBI illegally spread disinformation about Hunter Biden's laptop — an operation that culminated in the censorship of a New York Post story in Oct 2020 by Twitter & Facebook. Now, newly released documents reveal the partisan FBI group that ran it. https://t.co/noevAKHJY8
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 5.7K interactions against 1.4M followers, an engagement rate of 0.404%. Measured over 28 original posts, its engagement rate beats 91% of 3,739 tracked accounts of a similar size. Comparing inside a size band matters here: engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly just re-measure the follower count. Posts are seen about 115K times each, and 4.95% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 8.17% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 4 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on roughly 77% of days. Most posts go out around 15:00 UTC, and Tuesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 28 posts sampled, 93% carry an image or video, 46% are part of a thread and 14% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 103K interactions, about 18x its own typical post.
- What is Michael Shellenberger's engagement rate on X?
- Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) has an engagement rate of 0.404%, based on the median interactions across 28 original posts from the last 30 days against 1,404,160 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.404%, Michael Shellenberger sits above the 50th percentile of the 36,378 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 @shellenberger have real engagement?
- Its engagement rate beats 91% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,739 accounts), which puts it in the top 10% for its size 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 @shellenberger post?
- Most posts go out around 15:00 UTC, and Tuesday is its busiest day, at roughly 4.03 posts per day across the measured window.