Elon Musk on Sunday introduced {that a} new model of X’s direct messaging (DM) characteristic, XChat, was rolling out with assist for options like vanishing messages, encryption, and the flexibility to share recordsdata, alongside its audio and video calling assist.
The brand new options aren’t but broadly obtainable, as XChat solely just lately began beta testing amongst a choose group of customers. Nevertheless, Musk stated that the X group expects to convey XChat to all customers someday this week, until they encounter scaling points throughout the rollout.
In a sequence of X posts, Musk additionally famous that the up to date model of XChat has been constructed on Rust with “Bitcoin-style” encryption and a “complete new structure.” It’s not clear what he means by Bitcoin-style encryption, provided that Bitcoin itself can’t be described as “encrypted.” (Bitcoin makes use of public key cryptography and signatures for its safety.)
Consequently, some are debating whether or not Musk is utilizing the terminology merely as advertising and marketing converse, if he misunderstands encryption, or if he used the flawed phrase — maybe that means to say “cryptography” as a substitute.
Picture Credit:X submit by Samson Mow (opens in a brand new window)
The X proprietor has typically spoken of eager to make X’s DMs a challenger to encrypted platforms like Sign and iMessage. Nevertheless, calling XChat a service with solely “Bitcoin-style encryption” calls into query whether or not it’s actually a possible competitor.
As well as, Musk shared on X that XChat customers can now make audio and video calls with out a telephone quantity throughout all platforms.
Forward of this launch, X stated it was pausing work on encrypted DMs, presumably as a result of XChat would quickly change the older system.
Sadly for X customers, the service has confronted some vital instability over the previous week or so, as a number of outages left customers unable to browse timelines and use different options, together with XChat.
