Elon Musk announces XChat: encrypted, vanishing msgs, audio, video calls without phone number

Elon Musk has just announced an all-new XChat is launching within X, which will be rolling out with encryption, vanishing messages, audio and video calls, and more.

XChat is built on Rust with (Bitcoin-style) encryption, with the Tesla and SpaceX boss saying that XChat has a "whole new architecture". Not only do we have encryption and vanishing messages, but XChat will let users send any file of kind, while audio and video calls can be made without a phone number on all platforms.

The new XChat system when compared to competing platforms like Signal and Telegram, differ in both features and security. Telegram has support for large groups and bots, but only its built-in Secret Chats are encrypted, with concerns surrounding metadata collection. Signal has end-to-end encryption by default, with minimal data collection that has people worried about privacy handles, but it's not feature-laden.

This is where Elon Musk's just-announced XChat system will differ, especially if you're a heavy X user. X will truly be the platform of choice in the months and years to come, as a social media network, videos, video calls, audio calls, encryption, etc and more. It'll be interesting to see XChat roll out, and how quickly, considering its out-of-nowhere announcement on X by Elon Musk.

X's new DM system has been slowly rolling out to beta testers, but it should be a couple of weeks before XChat rolls out directly to X users worldwide. It was just last week that X had paused its encrypted DMs feature as it was working on some improvements, and I guess those improvements are coming real soon now that XChat has been announced.