X is removing Circles next week

Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that X is removing Circles next week.

X/Twitter has announced that it will be disabling its Circles feature. The feature is set to be “deprecated” by the end of next month, leaving users with a significant change in how they share content on the platform.

By October 31, 2023, Twitter/X users will no longer have the option to restrict their posts to a personally curated circle of “friends”. Additionally, adding new users to such circles will no longer be possible. Instead, all future Twitter/X posts will be accessible to followers and the wider public, regardless of whether they are professional announcements or personal thoughts about any topic.. 

Implication of removing Circle posts for X’s users

It remains to be seen how the previous Circle posts will be treated, however, it seems that the company is pushing towards creating something similar to Facebook Groups-like Communities. 

Earlier in July, Elon Musk tweeted that, “We’re deprecating Circles in favor of Communities & DM group chat.”

While users can still set their entire Twitter/X profile to private to prevent random people from reading and interacting with their posts, there will no longer be a method to filter which of their followers can see specific posts.

Earlier in the year, users started noticing that their Circle posts started appearing on other people’s “For You” algorithmic timelines, which was not ideal if the user actually intended for the posts to be seen by a private Circle audience.

In May, the company confirmed this bug as a “security incident” that might have made “users outside your Twitter Circle” look at Circle posts.