Elon Musk He publicly confirmed what had been discussed since last November. Encrypted direct messages (DMs) are part of his Twitter 2.0 vision for the platform and the feature would debut sometime in March.
As a report published on the website of Slash Gear, encryption is great news for Twitter users who have a significant professional or personal commitment to the platform. no encryption, employees can see the messages, while with encryption not even Twitter itself will be able to see them.
Encrypted messages are an added security layer that was already available in apps like Facebook Messenger and Signal.
“With the goal of implementing the ability to reply to individual DMs, use any reaction emoji and encryption later this month”Musk wrote on Twitter.
Aiming to roll out ability to reply to individual DMs, use any reaction emoji & encryption later this month
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2023
An old wish for Twitter
Twitter has been exploring the possibility of encrypting direct message data since long before the Musk acquisition, to the point of reaching the prototype stage in 2018.
The project appears to have stalled there, at least as far as Twitter’s pre-Musk leadership is concerned. However, Twitter’s encryption seems to have received a jump with the arrival of the tycoon as CEO of the company.
Developer Jane Manchun Wong discovered the basic code structure for end-to-end encryption in November 2022. Wong tagged Musk at the time, who responded with a blinking emoji. She has since confirmed that Twitter plans to roll out encrypted DMs sometime in March 2023.
Twitter is bringing back end-to-end encrypted DMs
Seeing signs of the feature being worked on in Twitter for Android: pic.twitter.com/5VODYt3ChK
—Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) November 16, 2022
Although Elon Musk has said that the company “targets” to roll out encrypted messages this month, we may see it take a little longer. Twitter is notoriously running on just a fraction of the staff it once was due to mass layoffs and a general exodus of employees following the Musk acquisition in late October.