The popular social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, will on 31 October get rid of Circles.

What is Circles you might ask? Circles were established less than a year ago to allow users of the social media platform to privately share content with the people they desire to do so with. If someone fell outside your Circle, they couldn't observe or respond at all, which served as a beneficial function in reducing toxicity in certain cases.

But X has quietly announced that they will disable this feature. However, you might ask yourself what will happen to the content that users have already shared on these Circles. Will the content become public or completely removed? Christopher Budd from the Security Software company called Sophos, based in England, told the OFM Business Hour it is surprising how X did not say what will happen with the content already shared. 

Currently, you can no longer add more people to your Circles but you can remove them. “There is no information shared as to what will happen to the circle-protected posts. If the Circle privacy setting is put on they will remain or not – however, if the privacy setting is removed, will the posts now become public for everyone to see?”  

He said he is not aware of the reason behind the decision, but he would speculate it might be a business decision, as perhaps they weren’t getting returns from keeping these Circles running on the platform. “They gave no specific reason, they just made a post on their help centre that as of November, you will no longer be able to create a post on Circles.”

Budd sees this as a big concern. “This platform before had two options, you make your entire account private, which will give certain people you allow access to interact with you – or your account remain public and anyone can interact with you. Circles were sort of a middle group, where public accounts chose which posts certain people can interact on.”  

OFM News/Tshehla Koteli