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Twitter\u2019s new owner, Elon Musk, has been public about his desire to improve how the social network\u2019s direct messages work. In a meeting with employees today, he spelled out exactly what that looks like.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Framed by presentation slides titled \u201cTwitter 2.0\u201d at Twitter\u2019s San Fransisco headquarters on Monday, Musk told employees that the company would encrypt DMs and work to add encrypted video and voice calling between accounts, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Verge<\/em>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe 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,\u201d Musk said. \u201cThat\u2019s obviously not going to be cool and it has happened a few times before.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Musk is right about DMs being exposed before. In 2018, Twitter warned<\/a> that an undisclosed number of DMs between businesses and their customers had been accessible by outsiders for over a year. And earlier this year, the US government charged an ex-employee<\/a> with improperly accessing user data on behalf of Saudi Arabia, though it\u2019s unclear how DMs were or weren\u2019t used.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt should be the case that I can\u2019t look at anyone\u2019s DMs if somebody has put a gun to my head.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Over the years, Twitter has kickstarted and then paused building encrypted DMs several times. But now Musk is set on rolling out encryption as a top priority for the vision he is calling Twitter 2.0. \u201cIt should be the case that I can\u2019t look at anyone\u2019s DMs if somebody has put a gun to my head,\u201d he told employees Monday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIronically, 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,\u201d Musk said. (For those curious, The Wall Street Journal <\/em>has a writeup from 2015<\/a> detailing Marlinspike\u2019s time at Twitter.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Musk went on to say that \u201cwe also want to have the ability to do voice and video chat via DMs.\u201d He acknowledged that Signal requires the sharing of a phone number to start a thread and that, thanks to its account system, Twitter can facilitate secure calling \u201cso that you don\u2019t have to give someone your phone number.\u201d Signal has said since 2020<\/a> that it also is working to move away from relying on phone numbers, though it has yet to roll out that ability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I would ask Twitter for comment on what Musk said about encrypting DMs but the company doesn\u2019t have a communications department anymore.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n