Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, revealed that it manually reviews certain users’ direct messages (DMs). An X user, Kim Dotcom, posted a notification tagging Elon Musk, and flagging the issue. In the notification, X claimed this action is part of the company’s effort to investigate reported violations and misuse of its service, as well as to “comply with laws or governmental requests.” The policy change contradicts the platform’s previous commitment to providing end-to-end encryption for all content.
When questioned about the changes, Musk did not provide a definitive answer. He stated, “It currently works in a clunky way for one to one messages (if you turn it on). We’re working on making it easy to use and apply to group messages too.” He also assured users that “X audio and video calls are automatically encrypted.”
It currently works in a clunky way for one to one messages (if you turn it on). We’re working on making it easy to use and apply to group messages too.
𝕏 audio and video calls are automatically encrypted.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 8, 2024
The policy update has raised concerns among users. One user pointed out, “Is it me or did Elon not understand the question of Kim? Kim was worried about reviewing the DMs at the government’s request.” Another user expressed frustration, saying, “You didn’t address the root of the concern. Why is X collaborating with governments to sift through our private DMs?”
The social media platform X announced on Friday that it will soon require users to have a premium subscription to start a livestream. The new update will come shortly after X makes likes on the platform private for all users.
X did not provide a timeline for when the livestream feature would go behind the paywall, but stated that it would happen “soon”. Users will also no longer be able to start live streams via the X integration on the encoder platform.
The news was confirmed via a post by the official ‘@live’ profile on X, which wrote, “Starting soon, only Premium subscribers will be able to live stream (create live video streams) on X. This includes going live from an encoder with X integration. Upgrade to Premium to continue going live,”