Looking to compete with the likes of Signal, Elon Musk is ready to rollout XChat to all users of his X social platform. Rather than being a separate app for chatting, however, XChat is essentially just direct messaging within X — so who is it for, and what does it have to offer?
Taking inspiration from numerous sources, Musk says that in addition to text-based messaging, there is also video and audio calling. Other features include vanishing messages, the option to “send any kind of file”, and an undetailed encryption system.
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Encryption seems to be the big selling point for XChat, certainly for Musk. In a post on X about the rollout he made two references to it — firstly saying that it has encryption, then doubling down on this telling us that the system is “built on Rust with (Bitcoin style) encryption”. It is not clear quite what this means, nor his reference to a “whole new architecture”.
With so many trusted encrypted messaging systems available, it is hard to say who Musk is aiming XChat at. However, the pushing of the fact that “any kind of file” can be shared hints at many things, not least of which is that things that are not permitted on other platforms will be allowed on XChat.
The rollout is underway now, and should hit all X accounts this week unless there are issues along the way.
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