Among a bunch of product changes to make Twitter a more attractive platform, Elon Musk has mentioned multiple times your desire to make direct messaging better and more secure. So much so that he wants direct messages to “overlay Signal,” the encrypted messaging app.
Over the weekend, Musk said that the end-to-end encrypted DM feature will roll out this month. Along with that, users will also have the ability to reply to individual messages and use any reaction emoji. “With the goal of implementing the ability to reply to individual DMs, use any reaction emoji and encryption later this month,” Musk wrote. Users can currently only choose from seven emojis as reactions.
End-to-end encryption protection means that no one, including Twitter, will be able to read your chats (except the recipients of your messages). Several other messaging apps and protocols like WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage already use this type of encryption. Currently, Twitter employees can potentially read the content of direct messages on the platform. It is not clear at the moment if the encryption will be available for both individual and group chats. Similarly, it’s unclear if end-to-end encryption will be enabled by default or an optional feature.
Encrypted DMs aren’t exactly a new project. Twitter started working on them in 2018, but abandoned its efforts later. Last year, applications researcher Jane Manchun Wong discovered new code that suggests the social network has resumed work on the feature under new management.
Additionally, Twitter designer Andrea Conway also showed off a concept in February, which indicated that DMs would have a banner at the top of a conversation to indicate that it is protected by end-to-end encryption.
Other new features are just part of Twitter’s attempt to achieve feature parity with chat apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. The Meta-owned app expanded its emoji reaction feature last year and Telegram pushed custom reactions behind a paywall.
