- Elon Musk says calls and encrypted messages are coming to Twitter.
- Musk announced the new features on Tuesday via a tweet.
- The CEO said the first version of encrypted messages should launch on Wednesday.
Announcing the new features on Tuesday, the billionaire tweeted: “Coming soon will be voice and video chat from your handle to anyone on this platform. So you can talk to people anywhere in the world without giving them your phone number.”
Musk did not specify an exact timeline for the call feature but said “encrypted DMs V1.0” should launch on Wednesday. He said he expected the feature would grow in sophistication quickly.
“The acid test is that I could not see your DMs even if there was a gun to my head,” Musk said.
The Twitter CEO has recently taken a swipe at Meta-owned WhatsApp, another encrypted-messaging app.
Retweeting a user who shared a screenshot that appeared to show his microphone had been used by the messaging app while he slept, Musk said: “WhatsApp cannot be trusted.”
WhatsApp also responded to the tweet saying the company believed the issue was an Android bug that mis-attributed information in the Privacy Dashboard and had asked Google to investigate.
Earlier this week, Twitter said it would begin purging accounts that had been inactive for several years to free up unused Twitter handles.
Musk later said the accounts “will be archived” in response to video game developer John Carmack, who raised concerns that content from inactive accounts might be deleted during the cleanse.
In December, Musk said Twitter was planning to delete around 1.5 billion inactive accounts to free up usernames. He said at the time the accounts to be deleted were “obvious” because they had “no tweets” and “no log in for years.”
When approached for comment, Twitter responded with an automated reply that did not address the question.
