Be Careful What You Post: ‘Private’ Twitter Circle Tweets Showing Up Publicly

Are you sharing private musings on Twitter Circles? You may want to reconsider, as some of these private tweets are showing up on public For You timelines.

With a Twitter Circle, you can share tweets with a select group, similar to Instagram’s Close Friends feature. But as TechCrunch reports(Opens in a new window), a bug is causing tweets intended for private Circles to be shared with a wider audience than intended.

These tweets are largely popping up in the For You timeline of users who follow the Circle tweet poster but aren’t in their Circle. However, some Twitter users say Circle tweets are appearing on their timelines despite not even following the poster. 

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As one Twitter user notes(Opens in a new window), someone they weren’t following was able to see a private Twitter Circle tweet they had posted. “This hurts trust in the platform a lot,” they tweeted. 

Adam Moussa tells BuzzFeed News(Opens in a new window) that he first noticed a tweet he had posted to his Circles group had spread to a wider audience after receiving a notification that showed someone he didn’t know had liked it.

When Twitter announced Circles last year, it described the feature as one that “makes it easier to have more intimate conversations and build closer connections with select followers.” But that was before Elon Musk officially took over the company and decimated much of its staff.

Twitter, which now only replies to press emails with a poop emoji, did not immediately respond to PCMag’s request for comment on the bug.