‘Twitter 2.0’ to offer encrypted messages, voice and video calls, says Musk

Elon Musk and his ownership of Twitter has seen a number of decisions — and an equal number of reversal of decisions, too. Some that come to mind include the paid public verification feature through Twitter Blue, and even more notably, the layoffs at the company that have reduced the workforce at the social media firm by more than half around the world. Now, after having reportedly told employees still at the firm that there would be no further layoffs, Musk has presented ‘Twitter 2.0’ — a plan that includes building encrypted direct messages, as well as encrypted voice and video calls, into the app.

Reports citing an internal company meeting stated that Musk offered his view of building privacy into the social media platform’s personal communications features — which include encrypted one-on-one messages. The company will also seemingly attempt to create encrypted voice and video calling, and use its account identifications to enable calling without needing users to link their personal phone numbers.

According to a report by The Verge, Musk told Twitter employees that Twitter 2.0 would “want to enable users to be able to communicate without being concerned about their privacy, (and) without being concerned about a data breach at Twitter causing all of their DMs (direct messages) to hit the web, or think that maybe someone at Twitter could be spying on their DMs.”

End-to-end encrypted messaging and calling have become increasingly ubiquitous, and even raised debates regarding whether such a feature could also see law enforcement struggle to identify key details. While end-to-end encryption was initially reserved for apps such as Telegram and Signal, the features have since proliferated notably to Meta’s WhatsApp and even Messenger.

Musk further added that Twitter 2.0 would “want to have the ability to do voice and video chat via DMs,” without a user having to give a stranger their phone number.

The executive, who has been criticized for his actions taken at the company of late, also stated that Moxie Marlinspike, cofounder of the privacy-focused non-profit messaging service Signal — and also an ex-Twitter employee — is “potentially willing” to help the platform build encrypted communications.

Marlinspike, to be sure, had attempted to build encrypted communications services at Twitter, but left the company as the project took a back-burner.