Creating a battle

The mention has to be in a reply. A post that mentions @ratioed but isn't replying to anything is ignored. The account that writes the mention is the battle's creator and earns 1% of the final pot.

Which two posts battle depends on whether your reply says anything besides the mention:

The bare-mention rule lets you start a battle between two other people: find a reply you think is winning, reply to it with only @ratioed, and the battle is that reply against the post it answered. When deciding if a mention is bare, @handles, URLs and whitespace are stripped; if nothing is left, it's bare. Images and videos count as a take. A bare tag directly under a top-level post opens nothing: an empty reply can't fight, so the bot replies with a hint to add your take.

@alice      "Pineapple belongs on pizza."         ← ORIGINAL
  └ @bob    "Respectfully, no."                   ← REPLY
      └ @you  "@ratioed"                          ← creator (bare)

The bot answers with the battle link and a share card. If the same pair already has a battle, it replies with a link to the existing one instead. If X posting limits are tight, the confirmation reply can be skipped, but the battle still opens on the site.

A mention is skipped (silently) when any of these fail:

• Creator account age: your X account is at least 30 days old.
• Creator followers: you have at least 10 followers.
• Fresh original: the ORIGINAL was posted no more than 7 days ago.
• Two different authors: the ORIGINAL and REPLY can't be by the same account, and neither can be @ratioed.
• Blocklist / opt-out: none of the original author, the reply author or the creator is on the opt-out blocklist.
• Public posts only: protected (private) accounts are skipped, as are posts that are deleted or can't be fetched.
• Burst limit: one new battle per X account every 2 minutes. There's no daily cap by default; one can be switched on if spam shows up.
• Standing: the creator's account isn't banned from Ratioed.

Anyone can ask not to be battled. Opted-out accounts go on a blocklist, and new mentions involving them (as either author or creator) are ignored. To opt out, DM @ratioed on X or email the address on the privacy page. Battles already running aren't affected automatically; ask and an admin can void one, which refunds every bettor in full.

The creator earns 1% of the pot of every battle that settles with a winner (voided battles pay no fees). It's paid to the wallet linked to the creator's X account. If you haven't linked one yet, sign in with X and link a wallet; the fee becomes claimable once it's attached to the market.