Tech entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk is launching a standalone messaging app called XChat, which will compete with Telegram and WhatsApp, and is expected to be rolled out in the coming months.
“With X, we’ve restructured the entire messaging stack into something called ‘X Chat,'” Musk said on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast on Friday.
“We use a peer-to-peer based encryption system similar to Bitcoin. It’s very good encryption. We’ve tested it thoroughly.”
Musk said he hopes the new messaging app will be released within “a few months,” adding that the app will not have any “ad hooks,” referring to competitors like WhatsApp, which “knows so much about what you’re texting that we can know which ads to show you.”
“But that’s a major security vulnerability, because if you know enough information to show ads, that’s a lot of information,” he said, adding that hackers could use the same “hook” to read private messages.
Is WhatsApp reading your messages?
WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta, claims that private messages cannot be accessed and explains in its FAQ that messages between people are end-to-end encrypted using Signal Protocol. This also includes voice messages, media, and documents.
However, we know that “metadata” such as who you chat with and how often is not encrypted. WhatsApp does not automatically encrypt backup copies of your chat history.
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In WhatsApp’s FAQ section “Does WhatsApp collect or sell data?” Skirt answers the second half of the question, explaining only that “We work with other meta companies to help provide, improve, and support each other’s services.”
“If you choose to integrate your WhatsApp experience with other Meta products, we will share information with Meta to enable this.”
X Chat doesn’t have those hooks, Musk says.
Musk promised that X Chat will not have these advertising “hooks.”
“I’m not saying it’s perfect, but the goal of XChat is to replace what was previously Twitter’s DM stack with a fully encrypted system where you can send text messages, send files, make audio-video calls, and more. I think it’s the least secure of any messaging system.”
He added that the messaging app is available both as part of the X platform and as its own standalone app.
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