Twitter says the event that made private Circle tweets public was “immediately fixed.”
In April, users discovered a bug on Twitter that would make public the private tweets by Twitter Circle feature users on the social media platform.
Almost a month after the discovery was first reported, the company has now released a comment.
According to the social media platform, it told affected users that the exposure that made the private tweets public was due to “a security incident” that occurred earlier in 2023. According to Twitter, the issue was “immediately fixed.” It went on to give an apology.
“Twitter is committed to protecting the privacy of the people who use our service, and we understand the risks that an incident like this can introduce and we deeply regret this happened,” said the company.
When reports of the security exposure first started being shared online, a number of people speculated that the problem was the result of the company’s failure to filter Circle tweets out of the recommendation algorithm. Twitter’s communications department ceased to exist during the first round of layoffs implemented by Elon Musk, and the company didn’t release any acknowledgement of a problem at first.
Since Musk took over the social media platform, Twitter has faced a rising number of technical struggles.
Since taking over in October, Musk reduced the workforce at the company by at least 60 percent, cutting out substantial chunks of its senior leadership technical teams. Simultaneously, the company experienced a series of outages and has generated notable confusion regarding rollouts and retractions of its features.
Aside from the security issue it faced that made public the private tweets, Circles itself had been reportedly glitchy for several months. That said, until this recent problem, the flaws with the feature hadn’t been sharing private tweets with people outside of a Circle. Sometimes, they weren’t appropriately or clearly labeled as private or as impossible to share elsewhere, even if those restrictions were in place.
The social media platform assures its users that the issue has been corrected and that they can trust that the private tweets shared in Circles will stay that way.
