X is shutting down its Circle feature in October

Elon Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, is shutting down its Circle feature — bringing an end to its glitchy history — The feature allowed users to share a post only with a set of people. It was the social network’s take on Instagram’s “Close Friends” feature.

The company said the feature will go away on October 31, and users won’t be able to add people to their circle.

“X is deprecating Circles as of Oct 31st, 2023. After this date, you will not be able to create new posts that are limited to your Circle, nor will you be able to add people to your Circle. You will, however, be able to remove people from your Circle, by unfollowing them as described below,” X said on its support page.

The company will still let people look at their historical Circle posts after the deadline date.

Twitter first launched the Circle feature in August 2022, after testing it in beta for a few months. The company let people add 150 people to their Circle. Users were allowed to create only one Circle.

Earlier this year, users started noticing that their Circle posts were not labeled with a green flag, causing them to believe that the post went out to all of their followers. While this was just a scare, in April, users reported that some of their Circle posts started appearing on other people’s For You algorithmic timelines. In May, the company confirmed this bug as a “security incident” that might have “users outside of your Twitter Circle” to look at Circle posts.