Twitter last year introduced the new Circle feature, which works pretty much the same way as Instagram’s Close Friends, allowing you to post content that only selected users will see. However, it seems that Twitter Circle tweets are not so private anymore, as they’re now showing up for random users on the social network.
Don’t trust Twitter Circle with your secrets
Since last Friday, multiple Twitter users have reported seeing Circle tweets from people they don’t follow. More specifically, these tweets have been showing up in the For You tab, which shows suggested content based on algorithms. The problem is that tweets posted to a Circle shouldn’t be visible to anyone who isn’t part of it.
When this happens, the retweet button for that content is disabled. If you click on the tweet, it simply disappears as if it had been deleted. However, you can still see it in the For You tab. The bug was noticed by 9to5Mac and also TechCrunch, who confirmed with an anonymous user that an affected tweet had indeed been posted to a Circle.
This not only makes users question whether they can trust Twitter, but it can potentially even put them in danger if someone shares sensitive information with their circle and the tweet ends up leaking to others on the social network.
Since Twitter Circle was created as an option to let users share content with close friends without having to make their accounts private, many people use the feature to post personal and intimate thoughts about their lives. However, users should be careful now about how they use Twitter Circle.
Twitter is now a mess
Twitter has been facing a lot of serious bugs since Elon Musk acquired the company and fired several employees, including key engineers. The social network suffered a major outage a few weeks ago and even part of its source code was leaked online.
Back in March, Twitter made some changes to its For You tab, which is now showing many more tweets from accounts that users don’t follow. It’s also showing tweets from Elon Musk to people who don’t follow him. All these changes seem to have broken how Twitter works – or should work.
At the same time, Musk has been trying to push the paid Twitter Blue subscription, which is now the only way to get a blue verified badge on the social network – even if it doesn’t mean anything. The Twitter owner has also said that Twitter is going to limit the reach of tweets from non-paying users to crack down on spam and bots.
None of this has been working, though, as Twitter is a mess and has lost half its market value since it was acquired by Musk. We would ask Twitter if the company is working to fix the bug, but Twitter has fired its entire PR team and only responds to journalists with a poop emoji.
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