The platform formerly recognized as Twitter has substituted its Twitter DMs with a new feature. Elon Musk’s X has launched Chat, a replacement for the DM section that was located at the bottom right of the Twitter application for many years. Your previous DMs and group conversations persist, but now all communications are end-to-end encrypted; you can modify and remove messages and set them to self-destruct after a specific duration, akin to Signal. X asserts that this improves privacy.

This modification also brings a UI makeover. While heightened privacy is advantageous, numerous long-standing Twitter users are dissatisfied with these modifications. Locating existing conversations in the web edition of X proves to be more challenging, and renaming group conversations can be difficult or unfeasible. The mobile app version of Chat is noticeably slower. One of my enduring group conversations is already transitioning to Discord.

Nonetheless, it is now Elon Musk’s platform, and he is free to implement changes as he deems necessary. Perhaps Bluesky will one day roll out group chats.