X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, just yanked one of its most important privacy features. In a quiet and deeply troubling move, the company announced it is pausing end-to-end encrypted direct messages. Worst of all, there is no clear timeline or meaningful explanation.
According to a post from the official engineering account, encrypted DMs are being temporarily suspended while the team works on improvements. But here’s the kicker: users can still send and receive DMs, they just won’t be encrypted anymore. In other words, your messages are now visible to anyone at X with the right level of access. Hell, this potentially makes them more accessible to hackers too!
For a company that once flirted with being a bastion of “free speech,” this feels like a betrayal. End-to-end encryption is not just a geeky feature. It’s a basic digital right. It ensures that only the sender and recipient can read a message, not the company, not hackers, not governments. It’s the reason services like Signal and WhatsApp have become essential in a world increasingly hostile to privacy.
The decision to pull the plug on encrypted DMs, even temporarily, raises serious concerns about leadership at X… namely Elon Musk. For all his talk about protecting freedom and resisting censorship, this move speaks volumes. Under his watch, a crucial user safeguard is being quietly removed.
And let’s not ignore the timing. No roadmap, no transparency, no open dialogue with users. Just a vague post and a promise of “improvements.” This isn’t how you treat a user base that trusted you with their private conversations.
X has a growing reputation for haphazard leadership and erratic decision-making, and this move only reinforces that. Encryption isn’t a luxury, folks, it’s a necessity. And taking it away without warning is a slap in the face to anyone who values privacy in the digital age.
If Elon Musk wants to be taken seriously as a tech leader who champions user rights, reversing this decision should be a top priority. Otherwise, the message is clear: under his reign, privacy on X is apparently optional.
