Elon Musk Confirms Twitter 2.0 will Bring End-to-End Encryption to Direct Messages

Twitter chief executive Elon Musk confirmed plans for end-to-end
encryption (E2EE^[1]) for direct messages on
the platform.

The feature^[2]
is part of Musk’s vision for Twitter 2.0, which is expected to be
what’s called an “everything app.” Other functionalities include
longform tweets and payments, according to a slide deck shared by
Musk over the weekend.

The company’s plans for encrypted messages first came to light
in mid-November 2022, when mobile researcher Jane Manchun Wong
spotted^[3]
source code changes in Twitter’s Android app referencing
conversation keys for E2EE chats.

It’s worth noting that various other messaging platforms, such
as Signal, Threema, WhatsApp, iMessage, Wire, Tox, and Keybase,
already support encryption for messages.

Google, which already turned on E2EE for one-to-one chats^[4]
in its RCS-based Messages app for Android, is currently piloting
the same option for group chats. Facebook, likewise, began enabling E2EE^[5]
on Messenger for select users by default this past August.

Musk further touted that new user signups to the social media
platform are at an “all-time high,” averaging over two million per
day in the last seven days as of November 16, up 66% compared to
the same week in 2021. Twitter has over 253.8 million monetizable
daily active users (mDAU).

The slides also reveal that reported impersonations on the
service spiked earlier this month, before and in the wake of the
launch of its revamped Twitter Blue^[6]
subscription.

The new subscription tier^[7]
is tentatively set to be rolled out as early as December 2, 2022,
with a multi-colored verification system that aims to give out gold
badges for companies, gray for governments, and blue for individual
accounts.