X rolls out its Signal-like encrypted chat feature

The site formerly known as Twitter has eliminated what were formerly known as Twitter DMs in favor of something new.

Elon Musk’s ex has finally launched Chat, a replacement for the DM tab that has been located at the bottom right of the Twitter app for several years. All your old DMs and group chats are still there, but there have been some changes. Now it’s all end-to-end encrypted; You can edit and delete messages, and, similar to Signal, can also set them to disappear after a certain amount of time. X claims this is all for the sake of privacy.

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All this also came with UI changes. While the added privacy is, in concept, a great thing, I should note that many longtime Twitter power users in my life are disappointed with these changes. Finding existing chats in the web browser version of X is now more challenging than before, and changing the names of group chats has also become difficult, if not impossible. As per my experience, the mobile app version of chat is also much slower than before. One of my long-term group chats has already started the process of being migrated to Discord.

However, now it’s Elon Musk’s site, and he can do whatever he wants with it. Maybe Bluesky will eventually add group chat one of these days.