X to Shut Down Circle Feature

X, previously known as Twitter and owned by Elon Musk, has announced the discontinuation of its Circle feature. This move marks the end of the feature’s glitchy history. The Circle feature allowed users to share posts exclusively with a specific group of people, similar to Instagram’s “Close Friends” feature.

According to X, the feature will be removed on October 31st, and users will no longer be able to add people to their circle.

“As of October 31st, 2023, X is deprecating Circles. After this date, you will not be able to create new posts exclusively for your Circle or add people to it. However, you can remove people from your Circle by unfollowing them,” stated X on its support page.

Despite the removal of the Circle feature, users will still have access to their historical Circle posts beyond the deadline date.

The Circle feature was initially launched by Twitter in August 2022 after beta testing for several months. Users were limited to adding up to 150 individuals to their Circle and could only create one Circle.

In recent months, users noticed that their Circle posts lacked a green flag indicator, leading them to suspect that these posts were visible to all followers. While this was merely a false alarm, users reported in April that some of their Circle posts started appearing in other people’s For You algorithmic timelines. In May, the company confirmed this issue as a “security incident” that may have exposed Circle posts to users outside of one’s Twitter Circle.