Encrypted Direct Messages (DMs) — one of Elon Musk’s long-promised upgrades to Twitter —have finally arrived on the site, albeit with serious limitations that may or may not be corrected in the months ahead.
Adding encryption to private messages has been an ambition for Musk for some time. Reports claimed he aimed to make it part of Twitter 2.0 as far back as last November. “The acid test is that I could not see your DMs even if there was a gun to my head,” he tweeted.
While Musk says that this is only “V1.0” and that it will “grow in sophistication rapidly,” it’s not clear if the main limitation — that it’s only possible between two verified accounts — is by design or not. That means that only those paying for Twitter Blue, verified organisations, or celebrities that Musk has decided to gift with verified status will be able to use it — and only then with other verified accounts.
The official support page also highlights some other limitations. It doesn’t support group messages or any media beyond links, and there’s no way to report encrypted DMs to the site.
There are also security limitations. Metadata is not encrypted, for example, and Twitter also has some specific weaknesses it highlights on the page for transparency.
“Currently, we do not offer protections against man-in-the-middle attacks,” the page cautions. It adds that rogue Twitter employees may be able to snoop, too. “If someone — for example, a malicious insider, or Twitter itself as a result of a compulsory legal process — were to compromise an encrypted conversation, neither the sender nor receiver would know ,” it explains. Twitter is seeking ways to make this more “difficult” in future.
While many of Musk’s changes at Twitter have proved contentious, this is in theory one that is long overdue. Indeed, back in 2018, the social network said that a bug allowed direct messages between users and business accounts to be seen by third parties.
Before encryption arrived, two smaller improvements to DMs were already implemented. As explained by the official Twitter Support account, you can also now reply to specific messages, and respond with any emoji reaction, rather than having to pick the more appropriate from a small selection.
We’re excited to launch two new features in Direct Messages today!
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 10, 2023
📢 Introducing DM Replies! You can now reply to any message you receive in DMs, making conversations smoother and more intuitive.
🥳 We’ve also added a new Emoji Picker to DMs, allowing you to react to messages…
Beyond these changes, Musk has made no secret of his desire to turn Twitter into the ‘everything app’ like WeChat in China. It looks like the first step towards that is coming soon, too.
“Coming soon will be voice and video chat from your handle to anyone on this platform, so you can talk to people anywhere in the world without giving them your phone number,” Musk tweeted.
That would be a big change. You can currently communicate by voice on Twitter, but via only Spaces which are public and intended for group chats. This sounds like more of a rival to WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, and it’s not really clear if there’s much demand for that, given Twitter’s more open nature.
