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Twitter introduces DM replies; voice and video calls coming soon

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Photo: Phil Pasquini / Shutterstock.com

Your Twitter DM is about to be much better as the platform is finally going to offer support for replies in direct messages in addition to a new emoji picker. Twitter will be working on improving the general messaging experience in the app as well by improving web support and implementing better rendering for replies to media messages.  Owner Elon Musk revealed that support for video and voice calls will also be coming soon. 

Twitter DMs might also be encrypted, with the release of encrypted DMs v1.0 scheduled for May 11 according to Musk. While he hasn’t said what kind of encryption Twitter DMs will be getting, his “acid test” being the fact that he can’t see your DMs “even if there was a gun to my head” might be a hint at end-to-end encryption. 

As is the case with everything on Twitter since Musk’s takeover, this is expected to grow in “sophistication rapidly” in Musk’s own words. As for voice and video calls, the “Cheif Twit” suggests that you can use your handle to call anyone on the platform. This can be problematic because unless restrictions against spamming calls are applied, high-following accounts might be in for a nightmare. 

There’s no word on which Twitter apps will actually receive these features but we assume that the Android and iOS apps will be the first to see features like DM replies and encryption, followed by desktop apps and then finally the web browsing experience. That said, given Elon’s rapid changes, there’s no saying for sure what’s going to happen with Twitter next.

Musk has been making some pretty significant changes to Twitter in a bid to make the platform more profitable, starting with the more expensive Twitter Blue subscription to the latest move of letting media organisations charge users on a per-article basis. Whether or not Musk’s changes are actually helping Twitter is another case, but they’ve made Twitter a very different platform from what it used to be in the past. 

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Yadullah Abidi

Yadullah Abidi

Yadullah is a Computer Science graduate who writes/edits/shoots/codes all things cybersecurity, gaming, and tech hardware. When he's not, he streams himself racing virtual cars. He's been writing and reporting on tech and cybersecurity with websites like Candid.Technology and MakeUseOf since 2018. You can contact him here: yadullahabidi@pm.me.

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