Twitter Blue subscribers can upload 2 hours of videos up to 8GB in size

Previously, Twitter launched an encrypted Direct Messages (DM) feature to increase the security of chats between users. With this new feature, users will be able to send and receive messages without anyone noticing, not even the app.

The CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk, announced the plan to release encrypted DM via his personal account @elonmusk on Wednesday (17/5/203).

In its latest support document, Twitter explains that users must pay to be able to receive encrypted DMs. This means that the feature will only be available to blue tick accounts that subscribe to Twitter Blue, verified organizations, and affiliates of verified organizations.

For information, organizations need to pay USD 1,000 or around IDR 14 million per month, while affiliates are charged USD 50 or equivalent to IDR 744 thousand per person.

This policy is clearly different from other platforms, such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal, and iMessage, which offer encrypted messaging features for free.

Reported by The Verge, Thursday (18/5/2023), this new Twitter feature can only be used when the sender and recipient are using the latest version of the application on their device. Then, the recipient of the message must follow the sender, have sent messages to each other, or received a DM request from the sender.

In encrypted conversations, users will find a small padlock icon next to the other person’s account profile photo. Later, encrypted DM will also be separate from regular DM.

Previously, Elon Musk had expressed his desire to add this feature several months ago.

According to Musk, this encryption support allows users to communicate without worrying about their privacy, such as data breaches causing DMs to go onto the web.