By: Nick Gambino
Encrypted chats are a must-have feature for pretty much any messaging or social media app. All the big ones have it like Signal, WhatsApp and Messenger. X (formerly Twitter) added it in 2023, but now the company has announced they are pausing encrypted DMs.
Starting today we will be pausing the encrypted DMs feature while we work on making some improvements. You will still be able to access your encrypted DMs, but won’t be able to send new ones.
— Engineering (@XEng) May 28, 2025
“Starting today we will be pausing the encrypted DMs feature while we work on making some improvements,” an X post from the company’s engineering department reads. “You will still be able to access your encrypted DMs, but won’t be able to send new ones.”
Now that makes it sound like this is a temporary thing while they work out some kinks. Hopefully it will be back up in the next month or so as privacy and security are a big selling point for most users.
Encrypted messaging was already pretty limited on X. First, it was only available to paid users, which itself was pretty controversial when introduced. When Elon Musk bought the company and took it private, he made a number of changes that ruffled many a feather. This included offering a paid option that was initially the only way to get a blue checkmark that showed you were verified and “important.”
So for $8 a month you could seem like a real somebody on the platform without having to contribute anything more. It became a lot easier to impersonate celebrities and other well-known people. And, of course, you could encrypt DMs. Or at least, you could encrypt some of your private messages.
You couldn’t enable encryption on group chats, only one-on-one messaging. You also couldn’t encrypt GIFs, images, videos or other media. The platform was only able to provide extra security for text and any links you wanted to share.
These limitations gave a false sense of security. Perhaps this is what they’re working on while they put the whole thing on pause – full encryption across all types of DMs.
I sure do hope they add more features during the hiatus and not just shore up some backend issues. We’ll see when encrypted DMs go back online. There’s no word yet on when that will be.
