Twitter Working on End-to-End Encryption for Direct Messages has been all over the news since the tech entrepreneur took over the social network. Musk set out to make sweeping changes to the company, including the disastrous Blue verification bug. And he did just that, laying off thousands of employees and contractors along the way. But one good thing comes from Musk’s takeover of Twitter: an initiative to bring end-to-end encryption to private messages.
End-to-end encryption should be a required feature in all chat apps available on iPhone and Android. The security feature is enabled by default in iMessage, WhatsApp, and Signal. Similarly, Telegram supports end-to-end encryption, as does Meta Messenger. But you must enable it for each individual chat.
Twitter Working WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram chats
Google’s RCS messaging also supports end-to-end encryption. Separately, Meta said it wants to combine WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram chats into a single platform that supports end-to-end encryption. But this plan has not been implemented yet.
Twitter has never had end-to-end encryption that works on private messages. But the company started working on it in 2018. This is definitely a significant update that could make even more useful. But users should moderate their expectations until the company becomes more stable.
Twitter is working found code traces
What is clear is that Twitter is working on this feature. App researcher Jane Manchun Wong found traces of code on Twitter for Android indicating that private messages will support end-to-end encryption. She posted a screenshot on Twitter that got Musk’s attention. The CEO responded with a winking face emoji, seemingly confirming that the feature is in development.
But, again, there is no timeline for the release of end-to-end encryption for chats. It’s also unclear if Twitter has the resources to pull this off now while it’s still struggling to deal with Musk’s takeover and brutal leadership style.
End-to-end encryption will ensure secure communication on a feature that Musk certainly needs for his overall social network vision. In addition, end-to-end encryption can be used for other new Twitter features that require such strong protection.
But we will cross that bridge if and when we get there. Given the failed Blue initiative, it’s impossible to say how often Twitter Mask needs to run the end-to-end encryption feature before it works as intended.
Twitter launched the Blue subscription on iPhone a few days ago. But then he removed the in-app purchase option from the iOS app because imitators were abusing the blue ticker. According to Musk’s recent tweets, will restart Blue on November 29th.