About public and protected Tweets
What is the difference between public and protected Tweets?
- When you sign up for Twitter, you have the option to keep your Tweets public (the default account setting) or to protect your Tweets.
- Accounts with protected Tweets require manual approval of each and every person who may view that account's Tweets.
Who can see my Tweets?
- Public Tweets (the default setting) are visible to anyone, whether or not they have a Twitter account.
- Protected Tweets may only be visible to your approved Twitter followers.
Note: If you at one time had public Tweets, those Tweets will no longer be public or appear in public Twitter Search results; your Tweets will only be viewable and searchable for yourself and your approved followers. Unprotecting your Tweets will cause any previously protected Tweets to be made public.
Why would I protect my Tweets?
If you want to control who sees your updates, you may choose to protect your Tweets. You can always change your mind and make them public later.
When you protect your Tweets, the following restrictions are put in place:
- People will have to request to follow you; each follow request will need approval. Learn more.
- Your Tweets will only be visible to users you've approved.
- Other users will not be able to retweet your Tweets. Learn more.
- Protected Tweets will not appear in Google search; protected Tweets will only be searchable on Twitter by the account holder and approved followers.
- @Replies you send to people who aren't following you will not be seen by those users (because you have not given them permission to see your Tweets).
- You cannot share permanent links to your Tweets with anyone other than your approved followers.
Note: t.co links, even those shared via DM, are neither protected nor public. Anyone with the link will be able to view the content.