Twitter users were excited when the news first dropped back in August 2022 about Twitter Circle — a feature similar to Instagram’s Close Friends. However, it appears there is a serious error going against the intended privacy.
According to TechCrunch, numerous users have reported that people not in their Twitter Circle have been able to view and like their private tweets. The bug has caused the tweets to surface on the “For You” tab for both people who follow them and those who don’t.
The glitch is in Twitter’s recommendation algorithm, which “uses multiple models to source, rank and filter tweets,” the outlet explains.
“Twitter seems to be outright failing to filter out private content before serving it to users,” Theo Browne, a creator, and former Twitch engineer, told TechCrunch.
Prior to the reports from Twitter users about the bug, Elon Musk shared that there would be complications with the recommendation algorithm.
“Our initial release of the so-called algorithm is going to be quite embarrassing, and people are going to find a lot of mistakes, but we’re going to fix them very quickly,” Elon Musk said in a Twitter Space, per the outlet.
The Twitter Circle issue is just one of the many bugs that have been encountered on the social platform. TechCrunch previously reported that there have been instances of tweets sent out for the Twitter Circle that didn’t have the green banner to make it clear it was for users’ selected group. The only distinction was that the tweet couldn’t be retweeted.
The bugs and the glitches come on the heels of all of the Twitter layoffs including engineers.
While errors are rampant, there has been more of a focus on Twitter Blue. As previously reported by AfroTech, Musk enforced the new process for users to pay if they wanted to be verified.
