X manually reviewing users’ direct messages, Musk has no clear answer

NEW DELHI: In a worrying trend, Elon Musk-owned X is manually reviewing certain users’ direct messages (DMs) to investigate reported violations and misuse of its service, “or to comply with laws or governmental requests”.

When an X user with @kimdotcom account posted this policy update, the tech billionaire on Monday did not provide a clear answer to the query, which goes against the policy of providing end-to-end encryption to every content on the platform.

“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,” Musk replied.

“X audio and video calls are automatically encrypted,” he added.

Several users raised an alarm over X apparently manually reviewing DMs.

“Is it me or did Elon not understand the question of Kim? Kim was worried about reviewing the DMs by government request,” an X user posted.

Another user commented: “You didn’t address the root on the concern. Why is X collaborating with governments to sift through our private DMs?”