Twitter CEO Elon Musk, plans to add new features to the platform next year. According to details from a meeting with employees, Musk will add encrypted chat, video chat, and voice messaging. His road-mapped plan has been classified as “Twitter 2.0,” and the goal is to bring Twitter up to speed with its competitors, Facebook, Apple, and Google.
Twitter currently lacks encrypted DM’s, making it the most insecure place to send private messages. There have even been security breaches in the past. According to Verge, Musk wants users to communicate without concerns over their privacy or possible data breaches. No one wants their direct messages to be taken to the rest of the web or to feel as if they are being spied on. The lack of encryption has caused significant problems in the past, with foreign agencies accessing user data within this year.
Elon Musk sent a memo to Twitter staff last night, per CNN
Those who don’t commit to being part of 'Twitter 2.0' by 5pm must leave the company pic.twitter.com/E1TQ9mrTBj
— TheStreet (@TheStreet) November 16, 2022
Successful rollouts of the new features will make Twitter a major competitor against other big techs like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Apple iMessage. If Musk can get Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of Signal, this is entirely possible. Signal is the leading provider of encrypted messaging, and Musk is already in talks with Marlinspike.
In a comment to Ars Technica, Signal president Meredith Whittaker stated that Signal was not currently working with Twitter. Whittaker said, “Signal has not been working with Twitter on this effort. We believe that more private communications are a net good, and we are interested to see how Twitter tackles the complexity of creating usable, encrypted DMs across the web and mobile.”
Whittaker is known for her leftist views. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that she would deny Musk the opportunity to work with Signal. However, Marlinspike is a free agent, so his offer to help really has nothing to do with her or Signal anyway. Marlinspike resigned from Signal in January 2022. Because he developed the encryption process, all Musk needs are the brains of the operation, not the operation itself. Musk may get just that.
