back to article Twitter users complain 'private' Circle posts aren't

Netizens using Twitter's Circle feature may want to take note here. Stuff posted in a Circle is supposed to only appear to those selected to be in that Circle, yet some tweeters claim their Circle-limited tweets are sometimes appearing in public timelines, contrary to expectations. This issue was pointed out by multiple …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Circling the sink

    Lord Musk has this covered.

    PS: Sally, sorry to hear about your rash.

    PPS: Dan, don’t worry, most of us knew about your affair anyway

    Etc…

    1. JimboSmith Silver badge

      Re: Circling the sink

      Rumour has it she never stopped bonking Toby de Lisle in case you didn't work out. (c)

      Richard Curtis

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    “ the bug may hurt whatever trust is left in Twitter”

    That’s a good one.

  3. lglethal Silver badge
    WTF?

    Can Twitter just die already?

    I do have to wonder what the hell the deal is with the painting over the W bollocks. I think I totally missed that bit of "news".

    So Elon wants to remove a bit of free company advertising from a building that he's currently renting (although not paying for apparently). What does he think? That by changing the name on the sign, it will no longer count towards him legally renting the building?

    I dont know what's going through that Man's head, but it certainly seems to be bypassing his brains...

    1. sabroni Silver badge

      Re: I do have to wonder what the hell the deal is.....

      Remember Beavis and Butthead?

      https://armoxon.substack.com/p/the-worlds-smartest-man-doesnt-want

      1. Catkin Silver badge

        Re: I do have to wonder what the hell the deal is.....

        I do wonder whether "journalists" who keep pushing the Apartheid line about Musk are ignorant of the truth or just happy to lie because it's done for the 'greater good'. There's plenty of things that actually happened to criticise him for.

    2. drand

      Re: Can Twitter just die already?

      He now just needs to paint over the 'ter' and he'll be bob on.

    3. Orv Silver badge

      Re: Can Twitter just die already?

      I can't decide if it's a juvenile prank, or an attempt to break the lease on a building he doesn't really want anymore.

  4. prandeamus

    "and the company's press email account now only responds with a poop emoji..."

    Excuse me while I recover my jaw from the floor. I knew things were bizarre at the bird, but that's just mad.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      It's been like that for months.

      In other news, it turns out that Twitter's systems were incredibly well built, as they've not failed completely and permanently after almost six months of abuse with nearly zero maintenance.

      I'm very surprised. I thought they'd never reach Easter.

      I guess corporate evictions take as long as residential ones.

      1. Orv Silver badge

        They seem reliable, but also very rigid and difficult to change -- or maybe he just fired everyone who understands how to make changes. Reportedly the reason that he didn't go through on removing all the "legacy" blue checks is no one could figure out a way to do it other than removing each one by hand, one at a time.

    2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      The BBC are also getting that response from the Twitter press contact, and they carefully report it and/or display it - to readers in online news pages, anyway.

  5. Iain Croll

    Yeah blocks are also not working since I can see tweets from blocked accounts. Almost like they have fired all the people who knew how the product was supposed to work.

  6. Jonathan Richards 1

    Corporate uses

    For a while I've thought that corporate users of Twitter, and maybe especially media organizations, were running a bit of a reputational risk by operating Twitter accounts. Now it seems they might even be running a security risk, if they can't rely on the advertised features of the platform. I know that Twitter is a huge part of engagement with customers, but it can't be indispensable. The graveyards are full of the Indispensable.

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: Corporate uses

      Every company I've ever worked for are still hoarding a bunch of sound-a-like domain names, for no particular reason.

      There was a point at which it was deemed critical that a company hold EVERY variation of its domain in every TLD they could, yet nobody ever uses them or even cares about them (sorry, but if the official website is domain.co.uk and your customers are going to domain.com then you need to educate your customers on the perils of not using official links, not babysit them).

      Twitter is in much the same vein... you have to have a Twitter "because everyone else has one". Even if you never post anything on it, or only ever mirror the exact same posts that you put out on a dozen other social media accounts that you also "have to have", even to the point of buying software specifically to do so without needing to copy/paste it to each account.

      I cannot imagine for a second that any of that actually adds ANYTHING to a company either.

      Last place I worked at, we discovered that hiring the "marketing" person actually cost more than their own budget, which in itself never actually made any difference whatsoever to the bottom line of the company (literally that rare instance from going without any of that gumph at all, to full-on full-time person doing it all day long over many years).

      Ironically, they made one mistake with over-ordering which wiped out their entire budget overnight, so they actively ended up costing us money even if there had been any measurable difference. And over-ordering because they totally misjudged quite how many people were seeing their tweets, were interested in participating in events, etc. - the exact stuff that marketing should have figures and experience for.

      I can't believe that any company actually does anything but throw away money on the majority of their advertising, and almost their entire social-media interactions. They always hide behind some mysterious "intangible" benefit to the company but there isn't one. And if the benefit is intangible, that means you can't see it on your sales figures anyway, even via a roundabout route with "reputation" or "appearing high quality" or whatever.... so why are we bothering?

      I can just imagine going to the guy who authorises budgets and telling him that I need money and a member of staff, but for which there would be no visible, tangible impact whatsoever on the business by doing it. Just "trust us". But that's what many marketing departments seem to do all the time.

  7. Less Tech

    Get A Life... no, really!

    Too many Humans have lost their minds, and arguably their practical priorities. since the advent of (anti)Social Media time-wasters like FB and Twitter. Of course, the 'Smart' phone manufacturers are more than willing to assist your lame 24-hour fascination with texting and selfing yourselves ad nauseum.

    Much of society is borderline pathetic at this point. Adults are free to make their own choices. But no one should have the right to encourage or assist the next generation(s) in wasting their lives and losing touch with reality through hi-tech machinations. The sight of 2 - 4 year old's rarely looking up from phones and tablets is disturbing.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: advent of (anti)Social Media time-wasters

      some of us have never felt the need to partake in Social Media time wasting.

      some of us have never felt the need to take a selfie (personally, I don't want to crack the lens with my ugly mug)

      some of us have only used text messages to actually convey something of importance

      some of us have not had our phones surgically attached to our bodies (thankfully 'find my Phone' comes in very useful)

      some of us have made those choices freely. It is a pity that we make up only around 1% of the population.

  8. trevorde Silver badge

    Response from Twitter

    We are aware of the inconsistent behaviour of Twitter Circles. Unfortunately, we do not have any developers who know how to fix this issue. As such, we will be update the description of Twitter Circles to match the new behaviour. As soon as we get some technical writers.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    He painted out the "W"?

    presumably be cause he doesn't want to advertise the fact that he is a wanker?

  10. Groo The Wanderer Silver badge

    With Elon "Bugs'R'Us" Musk at the helm, could you expect otherwise? None of his other software ventures has exactly been known for anything resembling "quality", just flash without viable substance (e.g. ChatGPT, which can't be relied on for squat due to its propensity for hallucinations, and lack of citing sources for its answers, or "Self-Driving" technology that can't see stop signs and oncoming vehicles.)

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In related news, apparently there's no company named Twitter anymore. It's now X Corp.

    https://slate.com/technology/2023/04/twitter-inc-x-corp-elon-musk-x-nevada.html

    1. Orv Silver badge

      I wonder if this means he's actually going to go for the "make it a payments app" strategy. I just don't see how that can work in the US where we have an annoyingly large number of payment apps already. What's his added value? Dogecoin? Poop emojis?

      1. Ace2 Silver badge

        I definitely want to move my primary paying-for-stuff over to a new app run by a twat with no compunctions about broadcasting people’s personal data when it serves his purposes.

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      He meant to call it "Ex-corp", to signal its imminent parrot-like status, but his lawyer misheard him.

  12. Franco

    Starting to wonder at this point if Elon is playing an elaborate verson of Brewster's Millions and has to squander silly amounts of money to earn even more.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      I think he knows it's doomed, so he's doing a bunch of random stuff to appeal to what remains of his rabid fan base, who will eagerly tell everyone within hearing that it's "four-dimensional chess". It's like the old saying: He's crazy like a narcissist who doesn't care about consequences or other people and lives to see his name in the press fox.

      1. very angry man

        Can the last users please turn off the server

        this is really going to hert the last remaining user's of the twat, pedo guys mates and drugs r us, right, left wing, Islamic, recruiters.

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