Windy cityMar 13

Is this the first time a major service has removed end-to-end encryption instead of adding it? Why Instagram?

#instagram #socialmedia #privacy #infosec #technology #enshittification

Show threadSafigoMar 13

@pheonix I was always surprised that #Meta decided to add it in the first place.

#E2EE has its own complications the vast majority of people don’t want to deal with. And most importantly, most of their users don’t worry about that at all. They want fast and searchable history and a communication.

Show threadDanny Boling ☮️

@safigo

I'm genuinely curious: what about E2EE is complicated to the vast majority of people? Isn't it mostly transparent to the user nowadays?

@pheonix

Mar 13 at 5:23pmWeb
Show threadshadowwwindMar 13
@IAmDannyBoling @safigo @pheonix losing your private key. Or that losing your password means losing all messages. Its not the norm. And I now have heard of multiple people losing their signal message history when simply switching phones.
It does have its issues.
Show threadDanny Boling ☮️Mar 13

@shadowwwind

Thanks! I guess I've been lucky and sheltered so far.

@safigo @pheonix

Show threadSafigoMar 13

@IAmDannyBoling @pheonix You’re right, on a high level, it should be a transparent solution for users. However, there are some caveats with it:

* If it’s a truly E2EE solution, you can’t restore your password through email or sign in via email verification. The sign-in process must involve a secret or synchronization between devices (if there are any). The downside is losing your history, which includes the lost password and devices.
* There’s no good search functionality. All FTS solutions should be executed on the client side, which means downloading all the history of messages. If you’ve used a service for years, it could be gigabytes, which is unreasonable for many devices, especially browsers.
* The UI will be slow due to client-side decryption, especially in browsers.
* It’s also quite challenging to stream videos without fully downloading them, not everyone has 5G everywhere with unlimited traffic. Media cannot be compressed on a server. (If you have a bad internet connection, a server can compress an image from 20K to HD. Since you don’t need better quality on your mobile, keep it at 20K for your large screen on desktop).

These are just high-level considerations.

Show threadDanny Boling ☮️Mar 13

@safigo

Thank you for the explanations. I guess I'm atypical for most things here. I don't do much video or searching thru messages. But I know others do and can understand the problems better now. Thanks again!

@pheonix