Brian Merchant

@bcmerchant · Los Angeles, CA · joined 21 Aug 2008

author: BLOOD IN THE MACHINE and THE ONE DEVICE editor: TERRAFORM formerly: LA Times tech columnist, Motherboard, etc NEWSLETTER ----------v

28 830Followers

3 503Following

9 597Posts total

304.9KViews on collected posts

Against accounts of the same size

6 posts from the last 90 days, next to the 10K–100K follower range. shown to more people than peers of the same size.

Median views25 230this account1 133median for 10K–100K

Reach, %87.51%this account3.62%median for 10K–100K

Engagement, %1.72%this account2.00%median for 10K–100K

Metric	This account	Median for 10K–100K	Ratio
Median views per post	25 230	1 133	22.3×
Reach (views ÷ followers)	87.51%	3.62%	24.2×
Engagement rate	1.72%	2.00%	0.86×

Others in this range → Compare with another account → How these benchmarks are built →

Growth & engagement

How the posts we collected actually performed: views and reaction rate post by post, what the audience did with them, and where the follower count goes.

Views per post

46.9K25 Aug

3.5K

3.3K

3.1K

122.6K

125.4K3 Sep

Last 6 collected posts, oldest on the left. The scale is logarithmic: one post can outrun the rest a hundred times over.

Engagement rate per post

0.76%25 Aug

1.85%

4.24%

1.58%

2.84%

1.05%3 Sep

Reactions — likes, reposts, replies and quotes — divided by views. Median for 10K–100K accounts is 2.00%.

What the audience does

Likes78.5%4 592 in total

Reposts11.6%681 in total

Replies1.3%74 in total

Quotes1.1%62 in total

Bookmarks7.6%444 in total

Share of every reaction we collected for this account. Replies mean argument, reposts mean endorsement, bookmarks mean the post was worth keeping.

The follower curve appears once this account has two daily snapshots — we take one a day, and this one is on its first.

Latest posts

Across the US, workers are souring on AI. The tech industry has insisted that AI would make workers’ lives easier and more productive, that the more people understood and used AI, the more they would like it. Something closer to the opposite has happened. https://t.co/CsBJzsFFq3 125.4K views · 998 likes · 246 reposts · 18 replies 03 Sep 2026 · Open on X →

Sam Altman: It was a bad idea to scare everyone with proclamations about how disruptive our company would be, if we hadn't done that, maybe everyone wouldn't hate us OpenAI's Head of Strategic Futures: Social Security is an accounting fraud that must be ended as soon as possible 122.6K views · 3.1K likes · 344 reposts · 35 replies 25 Aug 2026 · Open on X →

This is a great point. Let WSJ's op-ed page embrace AI. Pretty soon it will be the equivalent of an automated Forbes Contributor Network 3.1K views · 43 likes · 5 reposts · 0 replies 25 Aug 2026 · Open on X →

Anyone over the age of 16 who is using AI to write is a coward 3.3K views · 118 likes · 10 reposts · 9 replies 25 Aug 2026 · Open on X →

Incidentally, publishing ghost-written op-eds used to be a cottage industry unto itself, made possible by freelance writers and editors. Those jobs have increasingly been automated by AI. https://t.co/ITNv1ZkHOZ 3.5K views · 51 likes · 12 reposts · 2 replies 25 Aug 2026 · Open on X →

The WSJ is an astoundingly good paper. Its editorial pages, run separately, are very conservative and have cachet. One way to strip them of that pretty quickly is to suggest any piece could have been generated by the same algorithms that create unicorn pictures on WhatApp's AI. 46.9K views · 281 likes · 64 reposts · 10 replies 25 Aug 2026 · Open on X →