Elon Musk Makes Twitter Account Private; Netizens Question Criteria For His 'Private Circle'

TWITTER and Tesla CEO Elon Musk made his Twitter account private in a new experiment for the social media platform on Wednesday. He in a tweet said that his account would remain private until February 2.

He took to the microblogging site to inform his 127 million followers that he is making to test whether Twitter users would see his posts more or less following the change. Musk wrote, "Made my account private until tomorrow morning to test whether you see my private tweets more than my public ones."

For the unversed, if a Twitter user makes his account private then only his followers can see his tweets and just like Instagram, they would have to send a request to follow that particular user.

Following his tweet, one Twitter user pointed out, wow I'm in Elon's private circle. On a similar note, another said, If you’re seeing this tweet, you’re in the circle of trust.

Another Twitter user wrote, "The people I follow, whom I have on notifications, only started showing up after I set my account to private."
"I received very few likes/ replies from mutuals in the public post. It became almost unusable with the pop-ups at the top."

Meanwhile, the tech billionaire took over Twitter in October for USD 44 billion. Since taking over, he has made significant changes including laying off almost half of Twitter's workforce, cutting costs and streamlining operations. He has focused on reducing costs by laying off half the workforce and introducing new plans for the Twitter Blue subscription service, which offers the sought-after "verified" badge.

Musk had previously said that the Twitter acquisition would be part of a master plan to create "the everything app", a service that would offer social networking, peer-to-peer payments and e-commerce shopping. Prior to Musk's takeover, Twitter in early 2021 was exploring allowing its users to receive tips, or digital payments, from their followers.