Sneha SinghAs per to a leaked recording of an all-hands meeting acquired by a news panel, Elon Musk informed Twitter employees on Monday that he plans to add private direct messaging. Additionally, phone and video calls are the other social media network capabilities.
Musk conducted a presentation with slides called “Twitter 2.0” at the business’ San Francisco headquarters. He first used the phrase last Wednesday when he sent an email to the workers. The mail was threatening to fire them if they didn’t work “very intensely.”
Musk’s ambitions to modernize Twitter, including encrypted communication, are revealed in the recording that the news panel obtained. As with apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal. The text in DMs would be encrypted under the proposed system, making it only accessible to participants.
Twitter will have more features
Musk continued by saying that he had spoken with Moxie Marlinspike. The man behind Signal and a former employee of Twitter, who is “potentially willing to help out” with encrypting Twitter DMs.
Musk said, citing potential data breaches that could reveal messages or workers snooping on customers. But, he added, “We want to enable users to be able to communicate without being concerned about their privacy.”
An ex-employee was convicted guilty of spying in August after giving Saudi Arabia the personal information of Twitter users in exchange for more than $300,000.
“It should be the case that I can’t look at anyone’s DMs if somebody has a gun to my head,” remarked Musk. A feature that is already accessible on Facebook and WhatsApp, audio and video chat via DMs, was also mentioned by him.
In tech circles, it’s common to practice swapping out phone numbers for more unique account usernames. Musk last week affirmed Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s support for such an idea.
all I want is to finally move off phone numbers as ID…
— jack (@jack) November 15, 2022
It is still being determined whether all users will have access to the encrypted calls and chat. Or only those who subscribed to Twitter Blue, which costs $8 per month.
It’s also possible that Musk’s concept of “creating X, the everything app” is connected to the upcoming features. The wealthiest man in the world has talked about developing a “super-app” similar to China’s WeChat since purchasing the domain name “X.com” more than five years ago.
Requests for comment from social media platform did not immediately receive a response.
Musk has been making very sudden and new changes to the platform. From massive layoffs to paid verification, changes need to be appropriately made but have indeed made bigger headlines.