Elon Musk
Elon Musk
The new head of Twitter, Elon Musk, wants the microblogging site Twitter to have all the features of WhatsApp. Twitter allows users to share their views with a large audience, but Musk doesn’t want to limit the platform to just that—he also wants Twitter to have encrypted voice calls, video calls, and direct messages. We have seen all these features in WhatsApp and other messaging apps like Signal. Musk has revealed that he is getting help from the creators of Signal to include voice, video and other features on Twitter.
During a meeting at Twitter’s San Francisco office, Musk told employees that he wants Twitter to have voice and video calling features. “We want to enable users to be able to communicate without being concerned about their privacy, [or] without being concerned about a data breach at Twitter causing all of their DMs to hit the web, or think that maybe someone at Twitter could be spying on their DMs,” Musk said, according to The Verge. “That’s obviously not going to be cool, and it has happened a few times before,” he added.
In particular, the point made by Musk about the exposure of DMs is not false. In 2019, Twitter warned its users that an undisclosed amount of DM between companies and their users was available to individuals for over a year. To curb these security issues, Musk is determined to include encryption in Twitter 2.0. He said, “It should be the case that I can’t look at anyone’s DMs if somebody has put a gun to my head.”
Musk also praised the Signal encrypted messaging app. Musk revealed that he had spoken with its creator, Moxie Marlinspike, who is willing to help Twitter encrypt direct messages. “Ironically, Moxie Marlinspike worked at Twitter and actually wanted to do encrypted DMs several years ago, [but] was denied that and then went and created Signal,” Musk said.
Interestingly, Musk wants Twitter to have voice and video calling features without sharing the phone number. “Twitter can facilitate secure calling so that you don’t have to give someone your phone number,” he said.