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If tic - tac - toe has taught us anything , it ’s that Xs and traffic circle can not peacefully coexist .
X , the app formerly known as Twitter , has close down the Circles feature , which allowed user to post to a small , exclusive audience . Like an Instagram Close Friends story , Circles — née Twitter Circles — offered a more sexual social media experience . In other parole , you could overshare about your aliveness to an audience of friends only , rather than the whole internet . And is n’t one of the not bad joys of the net to emotionally shitpost without care about the consequence ?
But , as the whims of the Circle reminded us , nothing we say on the internet is ever actually free from consequence . The feature worked almost all of the clip . Almost . And anything less than 100 % efficacy is not ideal for a characteristic that mass used to share private thoughts with trusted friends .
As betimes as February , some users reported that their Circle tweets werereaching a wider audiencethan they were supposed to . These glitches showed upagain in April , and X ( then known as Twitter)apologizedfor the wrongdoing in May , notice a rare moment of transparency for the company .
Even when Circle tweets were truly private , they often appeared not to be — the immature banner denoting it as a Circle post only appeared some of the time ( I had receive some paranoid text from friends who wondered if I knew I had posted about [ put ] on main , but nope , this was just the glitchy old bird app playing conjuring trick on us ) .
I ca n’t conceive this site is going to take away my most treasured caper : my Twitter circle that only contains Tony Hawk.pic.twitter.com/P9pRF2HTIy
— Giovanni Colantonio ( @MarioPrime)October 31 , 2023
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But perhaps nothing is sad than the loss ofone user‘s “ most treasured jest , ” in which he posted to a Circle audience consisting only of Tony Hawk , because you could add people who did n’t follow you to your Circle . And they could not remove themselves .
Some users have expressed vexation that their private musings would be made public , now that circle are no longer . So far , this does n’t seem to be the case , though you ’re capable to view your own Circle tweets on your visibility . But on X , who knows when something will break up , so if you have anything lewd up , it might be worth deleting .
It ’s not percipient whyX is sunsetting Circles — perhaps it will come back as a paid benefit , like another darling feature of speech , TweetDeck(now called X Pro ) . But users will understandably be annoyed if they have to pay money to X to regain features they used to have for free .
Twitter Circle tweets are not that secret any longer
