Twitter Boss Says App To Launch Video, Voice Calling Feature, Encrypted Direct Messages

Musk also announced that encrypted DMs “should” be released on Wednesday.

Twitter could launch encrypted direct messages on Wednesday, Elon Musk has said.

The CEO also outlined plans to boost communication features on the social media service in a tweet late Tuesday, saying the latest version of the Twitter app contains changes to direct messages or DMs — non-public messages users send to one another.

The CEO said that users can now reply to any message in a DM thread, not just the most recent, as well as use any emoji to react to a message, CNBC reports.

Musk also announced that encrypted DMs “should” be released on Wednesday.

Encryption in messages means that only the sender and receiver are able to see a message. This means that Twitter and Musk would be unable to see or intercept direct messages between people.

“The acid test is that I could not see your DMs even if there was a gun to my head,” Musk tweeted.

Facebook parent Meta said in January that it was expanding testing for default end-to-end encryption for its Messenger service. WhatsApp, the other messaging app owned by Meta, has had end-to-end encryption for several years.

Encrypted messaging services have grown in popularity in the past few years as users focus more on privacy.

Musk also said that voice and video calls will be added soon to Twitter so users can “talk to people anywhere in the world” without giving them a phone number.

In the tweet, Musk explained that the new feature will enable users to initiate voice and video calls from their Twitter handle to any other user on the platform.

The new feature will also enable users to chat with people all over the world.