Some new features like encrypted messages, video, and voice calls are making their way to Twitter. Micro-blogging platform’s new CEO, Elon Musk has been vocal about his vision of Twitter and is working on the version of the platform, that he calls ‘Twitter 2.0’. As per reports, in a meeting on Monday, Musk told his employees that the company would encrypt DMs and work to add encrypted video and voice calling between accounts.
“We want to enable users to be able to communicate without being concerned about their privacy, [or] without being concerned about a data breach at Twitter causing all of their DMs to hit the web, or think that maybe someone at Twitter could be spying on their DMs,” Musk said according to to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Verge. “That’s obviously not going to be cool and it has happened a few times before.”
App researcher Jane Manchun Wong in a tweet wrote, “Seeing signs of the feature being worked on in Twitter for Android,” accompanied by code strings highlighting references to encryption keys. To this, Musk later replied with a winking face emoji, confirming that the feature is indeed in development.
End-to-end encrypted messages is a sought-after feature that will ensure Twitter’s messaging platform is at par with apps like Signal and WhatsApp. Meta has announced that Facebook and Instagram will be getting it soon as well. The feature is helpful in making sure that a conversation between users is only ever seen by those sending the messages and not a surveilling third party. In 2018, Twitter began work on encrypted messages but the feature never materialized.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Musk tweeted that the company is halting the relaunch of ‘Twitter Blue’ until there is high confidence in “stopping impersonation.” Just a week before it was announced, Twitter Blue, a $7.99 subscription service offering a blue check along with some other added features, will be relaunched on November 29. Musk rolled out the subscription earlier this month, however, they pulled it in a few days after several fake accounts with verification came up.
