- Twitter could launch encrypted direct messaging on Wednesday, Elon Musk said, as the CEO outlined plans to boost communication features on the social media service.
- Encryption in messages means that only the sender and the recipient can see the message.
- In theory, Twitter and Musk won’t be able to see or intercept direct messages between people.
- Musk also said that voice and video calls would soon be added to Twitter so that users could “talk to people anywhere in the world” without giving them a phone number.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced changes to the platform’s Direct Message feature, including the introduction of encryption.
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Twitter could launch encrypted direct messaging on Wednesday, Elon Musk said, as the CEO outlined plans to boost communication features on the social media service.
Musk said in a tweet late Tuesday that the latest version of the Twitter app includes changes to direct messages, or DMs — the non-public messages users send to each other.
The CEO added that users can now reply to any message in a DM thread, not just the most recent, as well as use any emoji to respond to a message. Previously, users were only able to reply to the latest message in a DM thread and only responded with specific emoji.
Musk also announced that the encrypted DMs should be “released” on Wednesday.
Encryption in messages means that only the sender and the recipient can see the message. In theory, Twitter and Musk won’t be able to see or intercept direct messages between people.
“The acid test is that even if I had a gun to my head, I couldn’t see your DMs,” Musk tweeted.
Facebook parent Meta said in January that it was expanding testing for default end-to-end encryption for its Messenger service. WhatsApp, the other messaging app owned by Meta, has had end-to-end encryption for several years.
The popularity of encrypted messaging services has grown over the past few years as users focus more on privacy.
Musk also said that voice and video calls would soon be added to Twitter so that users could “talk to people anywhere in the world” without giving them a phone number.
Since Twitter’s inception, the development of the direct messaging feature has not received much attention from previous CEOs. But Musk has signaled several times his intention to make Twitter an “everything app,” from messaging to financial services.
The new Twitter features Musk promises aren’t always delivered on time. In February, he said Twitter would introduce a feature to share ad revenue with creators on the platform. This has not happened yet.
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