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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

Twitter needs to improve its DM feature. It’s a nobrainer. They’ve been stuck forever on shitty DMs, they need to move faster.

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Who are the people who actually GAF about e2e encryption in Twitter DMs though? Of all the places to have private conversations, that ain't it.

It's a press release to drum up interest with the Musk-obsessed media though, and press coverage probably generates revenue.

Twitter itself, because now it doesn't have to scan and moderate DMs for CSAM and other illegal activity. Implementing E2E encryption is a part of why they can run a skeleton crew moderation team. Users don't benefit from this change. In fact, more people will be harmed by Twitter's product with its inclusion.

source: NYT 2019 investigation into the link between the rise of social media and the spread of CSAM

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/09/us/internet-c...

Scanning 1:1 DM's is overly obtrusive. Apple iMessage and Facebook WhatsApp don't scan DM's either.

> Users don't benefit from this change.

Twitter blocked links to the New York Post in DM's over their Hunter Biden story. Clearly all users would benefit if they don't MITM 1:1 DM's.

There are entire communities (mostly schools and universities) that use Twitter Dm's almost entirely for communication.

I'm not sure why either.

Reporters, activists, whistleblowers, ... a lot of folks would benefit from improved security. But at some level everyone would. Importantly, Old Twitter blocked links in DM's to the New York post over their Hunter Biden story. You couldn't even share that story over DM.

Why ?

Twitter is built around public communication.

Why would I pay for encrypted private communication when I already use better existing solution for free ? And even if I pay it's useless unless others pay too (what a fail might have been interesting if it worked as soon as one party was verified).

With this feature they go from a shitty DM to a shitty sometime encrypted DM.

Wouldn't call this a nobrainer ...

> when I already use better existing solution for free ?

The good thing about Twitter DMs is that they don't expose your phone number which means you can - reasonably safely - converse with strangers.

Compeltely depends on your threat matrix I guess. At the moment (encrypted) Twitter DMs requirements payment, so that's a risk in some kind to safety. It's reasonably trivial to get an anonymous prepaid phone number.

There are many use cases. For example, a known government officials giving a tip to a journalist without giving them perpetual phone access.

There is a lot more friction involved in getting an anonymous prepaid number, and them proving your identity. On Twitter those issues are solved.

Twitter's a terrible choice for that use case, since the metadata isn't encrypted and you can't create an account without tying it to something else.

There is a time value in getting information out quick without having to create new accounts and re-verifying your identity.

> the metadata isn't encrypted

I wouldn't trust this if I was Snowden, but I would trust this if I was a corporate whistleblower and wanted to get information out to jousnalists as soon as possible.

Faster compared to who? Twitter wasn't build for dms, it was never the primary purpose, and even if it is a standard feature for all social apps, I highly doubt 99% of users care about e2e.

So? Facebook wasn’t built for DMs, can you imagine if they didn’t implement and perfected the feature? I personally use twitter DMs everyday and trying to move more convos to better messaging apps. They’re losing a lot of usage because of their lack of good messaging features.

I guess my point isn't that they shouldn't build a quality dm feature, it's that most people don't consider e2e part of that. The average person cares about ease of use/utility and that's about it. The people who do care more about privacy already use apps like Signal.

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