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Twitter has been undergoing several product changes to enhance its appeal, and Elon Musk has repeatedly expressed his desire to improve and secure direct messages. In fact, he wants to make DMs even better than the encrypted messaging app Signal. Musk recently announced that the end-to-end encrypted DM feature will be launched this month, making it more secure for users.
Moreover, users will soon be able to reply to individual messages and use any reaction emoji, as opposed to the current seven options. This update is set to roll out in the near future, as Musk stated in a tweet over the weekend. He is aiming to introduce all of these features later this month.
Twitter plans to introduce end-to-end encryption protection for its direct messages. This means that only the recipients of the messages will be able to read them, and not even Twitter itself. The feature is already available on several other apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage. At present, Twitter employees can potentially access the content of direct messages, but with encryption, this will no longer be possible.
Although Twitter started working on encrypted DMs in 2018, the project was abandoned. However, app researcher Jane Manchun Wong discovered new code last year that suggested the social network has resumed its work on the feature under new management. It is not yet clear whether the encryption will be available for both individual and group chats, or whether it will be an opt-in feature or enabled by default.
n February, a concept designed by Twitter’s Andrea Conway revealed that DMs will be protected by end-to-end encryption, with a banner at the top of each conversation indicating this. The platform aims to match the features of other chat apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
In pursuit of this, Twitter has expanded its emoji reaction feature in the previous year, while Telegram now offers custom reactions, but with a cost.
What impact do you think encrypted Twitter DMs will have on user privacy and security? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
