Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and the new owner of Twitter, asked on Thursday for the platform's direct messages (DM) feature to support end-to-end encryption (E2EE). "Twitter Direct Chats should have end-to-end encryption like Signal, so no one can eavesdrop on or hack your messages," Musk wrote in a tweet.
The announcement comes just days after the microblogging service said it had officially entered into an agreement to be bought by a corporation fully owned by Elon Musk for approximately US$ 44 billion, or US$ 54.20 per share in cash. The transaction, which is scheduled to be completed within the next six months, will result in it being a privately held corporation.
"Free speech is the core of a functional democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where critical issues affecting humanity's future are debated," Musk said in a statement.
Twitter DMs should have end to end encryption like Signal, so no one can spy on or hack your messages
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2022
"I also want to make Twitter better than ever by adding new features, opening up the algorithms to improve trust, combating spam bots, and authenticating all humans."
The lack of end-to-end encryption for Twitter direct messages has been a source of concern, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) pointing out how it might jeopardise user privacy and safety.
"Because they are not end-to-end encrypted, Twitter has access to them," according to the EFF. "That means Twitter can hand them over in response to law enforcement requests, they can be leaked, and internal access can be abused by criminal hackers as well as Twitter employees (as has happened in the past)."
Meta reaffirmed that privacy is a fundamental human right and that "safe and secure messaging is more crucial than ever." Meta has been progressively deploying E2EE throughout its services, with hopes to complete the implementation sometime next year.
A two-year report commissioned by the tech giant and released this month by Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) found that "expanding end-to-end encryption enables the realisation of a diverse range of human rights and recommended a range of integrity and safety measures to address unintended adverse human rights."
The independent human rights impact assessment also highlighted the hazards associated with better privacy safeguards, such as child exploitation, the circulation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and the propagation of hate speech.
"Yet, the implications of E2EE extend far beyond such a basic 'privacy vs security' or 'privacy against safety' framing," the social media behemoth responded to the results.
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