• by Colin Kirkland , 9 hours ago

Following the recent tests of two upcoming stand-alone apps, X has officially launched its customizable, ad-free, private messaging service “X Chat” for iOS users.

According to a recent post from X's head of product Nikita Bier, X Chat is an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that offers users the ability to block screenshots, edit messages, set disappearing messages, send large photo and video files, and create “massive” group chats with anyone on the X platform.

Based on the Apple App Store listing, X Chat will not host ads, and it will not track user activity.

“Every message is end-to-end encrypted with a key pair unique to you, protected by a PIN that never leaves your device,” the iOS app description states. “No one can read your conversations. Not even X.”

Shortly after taking over Twitter in 2022, founder and CEO of X’s parent company SpaceX Elon Musk announced he would turn Twitter’s existing direct-messaging feature into a major competitor in the DM economy -- superseding Telegram and Signal -- as well as Meta's Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp platforms.

Last month, X began running new tests of X Chat on iOS devices through Apple's “TestFlight” testing platform, introducing up to 5,000 initial users to the messaging service. Along with X Chat, the social media company also ran tests of X Money, another emerging X-run app that follows the evolution of Musk's “everything app” vision tied to China's popular digital platform WeChat.

“If you're in China, you kind of live on WeChat,” Musk has said in the past. “It does everything – sort of like Twitter, plus PayPal, plus a whole bunch of things, and all rolled into one, with a great interface. It's really an excellent app, and we don't have anything like that outside of China.”

So far, users have provided mixed reactions to the X Chat app. While the majority of Apple App Store ratings are positive, there are many one-star ratings, with users calling out the lack of video-call functionality, failure in screenshot blocking, the requirement for a Google account, frequent freezing, regional access issues and more.

Other users and app researchers have expressed concerns surrounding X Chat's technical approach to privacy -- including X's ability to see peoples' messages and possible decryption by online predators as a result of the app's unchanging conversation pin.

Furthermore, despite the “No tracking” policy described in the App Store description, the app’s privacy section states that contact info, contacts, identifiers, usage data, and diagnostics -- the “data linked to you” -- can be “collected and linked to your identity.”