Encrypted DMs, Video And Voice Chat Reportedly Lead Musk's Vision For Twitter 2.0

Twitter 2.0 plans are in full swing at the eponymous social media company, and even though employees are resigning in droves over new CEO Elon Musk's "hardcore" demands, a ton of remarkable new features are coming soon. Among them is encrypted direct messaging. Musk reportedly talked about his plans of encrypting messages at a meeting yesterday, details of which were obtained and first reported by The Verge.   

Back in 2018, Twitter reportedly went as far as prototyping a feature for encrypted conversations, somewhat like the secret chat system inside Facebook Messenger and Telegram. However, those plans were abandoned soon after, and without any official explanation as to why. Interestingly, earlier this month, code sleuth Jane Manchun Wong spotted changes in Twitter's code that hinted at the development of an encrypted conversation feature.

😉

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2022

As per screenshots shared by Wong, which apparently depicted a raw framework of the system, secret conversations will have an attached encrypted keys functionality. Interestingly, Musk replied to Jane's discovery on Twitter with a winking face emoji, which seems to be an apparent confirmation that the suspicions are true.

There's actually a rich history behind Twitter chasing encrypted messaging. Wong was the person who originally unearthed Twitter's plans for an encrypted "Secret" conversations system in 2018. But two years prior to the discovery, when whistleblower Edward Snowden first asked for a self-destroying DMs feature, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey replied that it was "reasonable and something we'll think about."

As for the reason why Musk has greenlit encrypted DMs, he reportedly told Twitter employees that he wants "to enable users to be able to communicate without being concerned about their privacy, [or] without being concerned about a data breach." He further added that he doesn't want a repeat of past incidents in which private Twitter conversations leaked and made an international mess out of it. 

In 2018, Twitter disclosed that an API vulnerability allowed third parties to take a peek at Twitter DMs of users for over a year. Musk reportedly told employees that Moxie Marlinspike — creator of the popular messaging platform Signal — is willing to help enable message encryption for Twitter.

In the past, Musk has vaguely discussed plans for "an everything app" called X, but that app has yet to materialize. But it appears that Twitter will become a lot more versatile than what it is today, and all that will happen before the hypothetical X app arrives. Among Musk's 2.0 plans is turning the social media platform into a bonafide communications channel, complete with voice and video calling facilities.

The mercurial Twitter owner — who is currently staring at labor lawsuits and potential regulatory scrutiny, too — reportedly told Twitter's remaining workforce that "we also want to have the ability to do voice and video chat via DMs." The plans are ambitious, and from the looks of it, the peer-to-peer voice and video calling features will massively boost Twitter's appeal as the most fleshed-out online communications platform.

The likes of Facebook and Instagram have offered voice and video calling perks for a while, but they've never really enjoyed the "public town square" appeal of Twitter in terms of relevant, worldwide buzz. It would be interesting to see if encrypted voice and video calling are rolled out to all Twitter users for free, or if they are exclusive to folks paying $8 per month for a Twitter Blue subscription.