Elon Musk’s X temporarily halts encrypted DMs feature

Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has temporarily suspended its encrypted direct messaging (DMs) feature to implement enhancements.

This unexpected halt of encrypted DMs comes amidst ongoing speculation about “XChat,” a rumoured chat platform from the company.

In a post from its engineering team, X stated that while users can still view their existing encrypted messages, they won’t be able to send new ones for now. The platform did not specify when the feature will be restored.

“Starting today we will be pausing the encrypted DMs feature while we work on improving. You will still be able to access your encrypted DMs, but won’t be able to send new ones,” X’s engineering team confirmed the development in a post on the social media platform.

It should be noted that following Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now rebranded as X, he laid out ambitious goals to revamp direct messaging, aiming to rival privacy-oriented services like Signal.

For those unversed, encrypted DMs were introduced in 2023, but only for verified users. The feature had several limitations, including the lack of support for group chats and the restriction of encryption to only text and links.