Twitter Blue Opens Access To Encrypted Messages For Verification Users

Blue Twitter subscribers can get initial access to encrypted messaging services. (doc photo. twitter)

Twitter Inc on Thursday 11 May allowed users who subscribe to the Blue verification feature to gain initial access to their encrypted messaging service.

Tesla's social media platform, Elon Musk, says the service is now available to verified users and has installed the latest version of the Twitter app.

Twitter Blue subscription, which is now the basis for verification on this platform, starts with $8 (Rp132,000) per month or 84 US dollars (Rp1.4 million) per year.

"As Elon Musk said, when it comes to Direct Messages, the standard should be so high that if someone threatens us with weapons, we still can't access your messages," the company said in a post on the blog.

How To Work

The latest version of the Twitter app (iOS, Android, Web) generates a pair of keys specifically for devices, called a pair of private and public keys. Public keys are automatically registered when users enter Twitter via a new device or browser; private keys never leave the device and are therefore never communicated to Twitter.

In addition to a pair of private-public keys, there are keys per conversation used to encrypt message content. A pair of private-public keys are used to securely send keys per conversation between the devices involved.

Twitter uses a combination of powerful cryptography schemes to encrypt every message, link, and reaction that is part of an encrypted conversation before leaving the sending device, and remains encrypted when stored in Twitter infrastructure. Once messages are received by the recipient device, they are decrypted so they can be read by users.

In addition to encrypted messages, there is also a voice calling feature on Twitter that will make this microblogging platform parallel to social media apps Meta, Facebook, and Instagram, which have similar features.