Twitter bug makes some private Circle tweets public
1Don't count on your Twitter Circle tweets being limited to a close-knit group, at least for the time being. Users have discovered a bug that exposes at least some private Circle posts to outsiders. They frequently show up in followers' For You recommendations, but some say the content is reaching total strangers. As you might imagine, that could be problematic if you're discussing a sensitive topic or want to minimize potential harassment.
Twitter is unavailable for comment as it has disbanded its public relations team. Creator Theo Brown tells TechCrunch Twitter may be failing to filter Circle tweets out of its recommendation system before they're shared with other users.
Circles have been glitchy for months, but the flaws aren't known to have shared tweets with people outside a Circle. They sometimes haven't included the label indicating their Circle-only status, even if it was clear they couldn't be shared elsewhere. This is considerably worse — you now can't trust that a private post will stay that way.
Twitter has dealt with a growing number of technical issues since Elon Musk bought the company and laid off many employees. There have been multiple outages, troublesome API changes and confusion over feature rollouts and removals. While these hiccups aren't necessarily prompting a user exodus, they don't help at a time when the social media giant is reportedly struggling to keep advertisers and turn a profit.