"Twitter seems to be outright failing to filter out private content before serving it to users."
Extremely Broken
In case you haven't heard, Twitter Circles is broken. So broken that it allowed for some folks' secret nude photos to appear in others' feeds.
"Aaaaand Twitter Circles is broken," tweeted author Abraham Josephine Riesman, who discovered that her Twitter Circle nudes had been leaked. "I posted a nude to Circles yesterday and some (perfectly nice!) rando who I don't follow just liked it."
"Delete your Circles nudes!!!" Riesman added.
Riesman certainly wasn't alone, with users taking to the wretched platform in droves over the weekend to express dismay over the glitching feature.
It's yet another particularly egregious slip-up by the Elon Musk-owned company, especially considering that Twitter Circles are supposed to be a secure, controlled space where users can share their most personal thoughts — and pictures — with only a very select group of trusted friends and followers.
Auto-Reply
This latest algorithmic failure doesn't exactly instill trust in the beleaguered platform.
Twitter's failure to ensure the privacy of its users is "a major breach of confidentiality," Melissa Ingle, a former senior data scientist at Twitter, told Buzzfeed. "Your Circle is your trusted group of friends, and to see those posts outside that group suggests the algorithm is lacking basic functionality."
"Twitter seems to be outright failing to filter out private content before serving it to users," Theo Browne, a former Twitch engineer, told TechCrunch.
Twitter has yet to officially confirm what the problem is, or when it will be fixed. And as TechCrunch and others noted, Twitter's press email is currently auto-replying to press inquiries with a poop emoji.
In other words, the company isn't exactly taking these reports seriously.
All Around Yikes
The breach was part of an already questionable weekend for the social media company, with the company's controversial CEO deciding to remove the "w" from Twitter HQ's sign — while his algorithm's privacy filter crumbled.
It goes without saying that this whole thing sucks. And while Riesman, as she told Buzzfeed, thankfully wasn't too "fazed" by the incident, nobody using the platform should've been put in this situation.
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