Twitter plans to introduce complete messaging encryption this month, along with the ability to reply to specific DMs in a chain and use any emoji as a reaction instead of the preset seven. This is good news for encryption enthusiasts.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, provided an update on the new timeline for DM updates over the weekend, confirming earlier rumours about changes to Twitter’s DM options.
The greatest change here is encrypted direct messages (DMs), which would bring Twitter closer to Meta and other messaging apps in terms of enhancing user privacy.
When end-to-end encryption is set for your Twitter DMs, a notification stating that “Messages and calls are secured using end-to-end encryption” will appear in your chat thread.
As a result, only the chat participants will be able to see the contents of these chats, increasing security and privacy. But, because encryption cannot be broken by government or legal agencies, it may also encourage criminal conduct.
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It has been a major source of objection to Meta’s push to enable encryption across all of its messaging products, but in spite of objections, Meta is moving through with that plan, and it appears like Twitter may follow suit shortly.
In contrast, being able to reply to a specific DM will make it simpler to have a more focused dialogue as opposed to adding yet another reply to the larger thread.
You can use the procedure to tap on the three dots menu and select any emoji as your response. Twitter is also thinking about giving users the chance to customize their default reaction set, but it’s unclear if that feature will be included in the initial, scheduled rollout.
Each of these changes might be intriguing, and Musk has long hinted at the importance of the move to automatic encryption. But, they don’t do anything to enhance the user experience, thus it’s unlikely that people will be very interested in or take use of them.
While these are interesting changes that some users will find very useful, they are unlikely to have a significant impact on increasing revenue or adoption, which is probably not what they were intended to do. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see Twitter putting this kind of attention towards smaller details in the midst of its various more pressing issues.
